This article by David Johnston is in the sequel of the on-going debate regarding Jung and the Collective Shadow vis-à-vis the Primordial Shadow in the Story of Creation narrated by the Mother and elaborated in several respects by Sri Aurobindo in different contexts with varying contextual shades and details. This can be accessed at http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2009/11/22/4377784.html
We are thankful to the author for
giving us Jungian insight into Jung which will be of immense value in also
drawing a distinction between the two Shadows, one haunting us everywhere and
the other as the foundation established in the creative process of bringing out
a new manifestation, a mechanism in the delight of being to be many, the
Supreme’s Will expressing itself through the Tapas-Yajna or the extreme intensification
of self-withdrawal of the Four mighty Powers of Light who have become their
opposites. ~ RYD
Introduction
I am always in awe with the range
of the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s consciousness, in this case, the
description given by Deshpande indicates that it extends so far as to include
the act of creation itself. Jung gave no indication that he had that kind of
awareness, but his psychology does, nonetheless fit nicely into Sri Aurobindo’s
and the Mother’s metaphysical envelope. The relevant message is that there were
four Beings of Light involved in the creation, which immediately on the act of
creation became their own opposite, which is a mystery to the human mind.
Jung’s Relationship with Philemon
When Jung was about 38 in 1913, he
had a remarkable dream of a figure he called Phillemon, whom he described as exuding
an Egypto-Hellenistic atmosphere and a Gnostic suggestion. It was, in my
estimation, a threshold dream that anticipated the development of his
psychological system, requiring a lifetime to complete.
Here is the dream:
There was a blue sky, like the sea,
covered by flat brown clods of earth. It
looked as if the clods were breaking apart and the blue water of the sea was
becoming visible between them. The water was the blue sky. Suddenly there
appeared from the right a winged being sailing across the sky. I saw that it
was an old man with the horns of a bull. He held a bunch of four keys, one of
which he clutched as if he were about to open a lock. He had the wings of a
kingfisher with its characteristic colors.
Jung used to walk up and down his garden
with Philemon and dialogue with him, as he was quite real to him. He eventually
painted him on a wall in his house in Bollingen.
Jung related that he was like his
guru, represented superior insight and taught him about the objective psyche,
aspects of the psyche that were not produced by Jung. Etymologically, the name means "loving,
affectionate," based on the Greek word philein "to love."
Jung was also very aware of the
Roman myth, where an old couple Philemon and Baucis, were the only ones to
welcome the gods, Jupiter and Mercury, and were rewarded by becoming temple
priests and, when they died together—on their request, they were turned into
intertwining trees. In Goethe’s Faust, in his hubris, Faust caused the murder
of Philemon and Baucis, and, according to Jung, anticipated the fate of the
German people. Jung was so taken by Goethe’s treatment of the old couple that
he felt he had a responsibility to personally atone for the crime. Thus, over
the entrance of one of the Towers of his house in Bollingen, he had following
words imprinted: Philemonis Sacrum—Fausti Poenitentia [Shrine of
Philemon—Repentence of Faust].
Although Philemon of Jung’s
fantasies is different from the Philemon of the Roman myth and Faust, he
clearly chose the name judiciously, and the choice of name suggests the
affectionate acceptance and love of the gods, a monumental choice given the
godless European rationalism and romanticism of the time, still a defining
factor for the West. An essential aspect of Jung’s psychological system, in
fact, is that the objective psyche contains the archetypes of the collective
unconscious, which includes the gods and goddesses and angelic beings.In their
incipient form, these are the points of intelligence, the scintillae or
soul-sparks, the lumen naturae, the light of nature the alchemists. They point
to accessible knowledge in the unconscious that come through dreams, and ocular
and auditory visions. Since, in Jung’s definition, the archetype is psychoid,
meaning it includes the spiritual and physical dimensions of being and beyond
both the spiritual and material to the unknown, they can potentially be
incarnated in life. Indeed, the further reaches of the individuation process
involves the incarnation of the Godhead in the human instrument.
As far as Jung’s dream is
concerned, the waters of the blue sky remind one of the Vedic upper waters and
the spiritual dimension of being. The clods of earth that are breaking apart
suggest the breakup of a materialistic viewpoint to allow for a spiritual view
and openness to the wisdom of the unconscious. As Jung says, Philemon was a
mysterious figure, who came from
Initial Amplifications on Philemon
Jung described him as being an old
man with bull’s horns and kingfisher wings, who clutched a set of four keys. I
will note at the outset that the four keys here are essential to the symbolism
and reflect Sri Aurobindo’s account of the creation involving the four Beings
of light, who immediately became their opposite. Marie Louise von Franz,
arguably, Jung’s most important disciple, noted that Philemon replaced the
Jewish prophet Elijah in Jung’s active fantasy as the embodiment of
wisdom. According to legends of late
antiquity and the Middle-Ages, Elijah had some roguish and mischievous traits,
while being a prophetic personality. He was also identified with Metatron, the
lead angel in the Judeo-Christian tradition, who in late antiquity, was also
considered to have incarnated in John the Baptist and Enoch and John the
Baptist. She goes on to show how these
figure, especially Elijah and John, were depicted as unusually hairy, a characteristic
of Merlin of the Grail tradition. Merlin was reputed to have a Christian mother
and the devil for a father. During the Middle-ages, he was believed to be
closely connected to the alchemical mercurius, which, in alchemy, is the
transformative substance, par excellence. From the point of view of this essay,
the message here is that the embodiments of wisdom and spiritual and
psychological transformation, according to Jung’s early experience, involves
containing the opposites of virtue and devilishness, serious/prophetic and
mischievous, of good and evil, of instinct [being hairy] and spirit, in a kind
of delegated model of the four Beings of creation and their negation.
The Fourfold Self
As a matter of fact, the symbolism
of the fourfold nature of the psyche and the Self is the very ground of Jung’s
approach to psychology and knowledge. Jung’s initial insight into this
foundational reality, which he filled out over the rest of his life, came from
Philemon. At a personal and individual level, Jung developed a fourfold
psychological typology that consists of four functions of consciousness,
thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation and two attitudes, extraversion and
introversion. As with Sri Aurobindo’s soul-force and the fourfold personality, and
the Mother’s four austerities and four liberations, personality integration
eventually involves integrating all four aspects of the psyche, defined in
Jung’s case by the four functions of consciousness and the two attitudes. What
Jung discovered that is unique, is what is involved psychologically in
integrating the inferior side of personality, with all its shadow qualities,
which is not only difficult but varies by individual, depending on which
function of consciousness and attitude is inferior to the individual.
The Symbolic Three [3] and the Four [4] and the Shadow Sun
It can be understood to relate to
the alchemical axiom of Maria Prophetessa, which states: Out of one comes the
two, out of two three, and out of three, the one that is the fourth. According
to the alchemist’s experience, the difficulty lay in going from three to four,
which symbolically means going from process and insight to incarnation of the
Godhead. According to alchemical literature there was often a wavering between
the three [3] and the four [4] by individual alchemists. In contemporary
Jungian psychology there is a recognizable experiential difficulty of moving
from insight and individuation as a developing dynamic process to living
directly according to the Self. The symbol of the four and the square are
similar, and refer to the incarnation of the Self in life.
Interestingly, Sri Aurobindo
indicated that the symbol of the supermind, or truth mind, is a square.
Jung often referred to the
alchemical filius philosophorum, the son of the philosopher, given birth to by
the alchemical work. He is the son of the chthonic mother and the secret hidden
in the darkest matter, the sought after lapis, the philosopher’s stone or
truth, the filius macrocosmi or saviour of the macrocosm. According to Jung,
there is a parallel in the Gnostic Anthropos or original man, as well as the
Anthroparian, a kind of goblin familiar of the alchemical adept. The alchemical
process involves both an ascent and descent, and the filius both ascends and descends,
uniting Above and Below, while effecting a transformation in the workings of
everyday life. The alchemists also spoke of the need to enter the gate of dark
ignorance to gain the field of light, the need to experience the sol
Jung’s Model of the Fourfold Quaternity and Completeness of Being
I will end this paper with further
amplifications on the nature of Philemon that relate him to the Vedic tradition
as well. In the meantime I wish to briefly describe the nature of the fourfold
Self according to Jung’s latest and most complete formulation in his book,
Aion. To begin with, Jung initially found support for his understanding of the
Self in the Upanishads. Thus, according to the Mandukya Upanishad: “All this
Universe is the Eternal Brahman, this Self is the eternal, and the Self is
fourfold.” [Verse 2, Sri Aurobindo, BCL, Vol. 12, p. 289.] This verse refers to the
Jung’s later formulation of the
Self involved a fourfold psyche at four different levels of being. This is
reminiscent of the Divine perfection and fourfold quaternity of being,
involving the fourfold perfection of each of the physical, vital, psychic and
mental beings, as described by Sri Aurobindo’s disciple, V. Madhusudan Reddy,
in his profound three volume study of the Vedas. Although there is some
similarity in intent, the emphasis in each model is quite different. Reddy
refers to both Sri Aurobindo’s definition of the physical, vital, psychic and
mental beings, and traditional Sanskrit classifications of what a purified
nature entails, without the integrating dynamic involved in Jung’s diagram.
Rather it is assumed in the conscious functioning of the psychic and mental beings.
In Jung’s account, emphasis is put on the opposites, the symbolic nature of the
Self and its integration that assumes the need for discernment by the four
orienting functions of consciousness. The four levels of being described by
Reddy can, in fact, be discerned in Jung’s description of the Self’s fourfold
quaternity.
Using Gnostic and alchemical
imagery Jung describes how, in its completeness, the fourfold Self manifests on
each of four levels of being. He began by describing a transcendent unitary God-image
beyond duality as the original creative source of the unfolding manifestation
composed of all manner of dualities and pairs of opposites. He then discussed
the existence of what he called the Unus Mundus, one world, which he defines as
a Transcendent creative source beyond space and time, yet, in potentia,
composed of multiplicity contained in unity. He observed that synchronistic
events [meaningful coincidences] are experiences of Unus Mundus in life and
acts of creation acts in time. He also noted that the goal of complete
integration of being involves interiorizing the alchemical vas [vessel],
through a continuous dialogue between the conscious and unconscious, to form a
square formed of the elemental truths of life.
This strikes me as being similar to the requirement to bring forward the
psychic being or soul behind the heart and then to extend the process to
include different levels of the spiritual and supramental beings in the yoga of
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Jung developed a model of
psychological completeness and purity of being consisting of four related
quaternities, each in turn being differentiated into a fourfold order. He
called the top quaternity, the Anthropos Quaternity, where the Anthropos refers
to the Original and complete man, the Purusha in Hindu terminology. The
original unity of the Anthropos, or higher Adam, is separated into four beings
of light and reunited in the lower Adam, or the ego of the ordinary person.
Here, it is interesting to note that there are four beings of light that are
differentiated and coagulated to form the ordinary individual ego, a distinct
mirror image of the four Beings of Light of the original creation myth,
according to Vedic imagery. This fourfold order of being can also be called the
Spiritual Quaternity, which is formed from a superconscient source and grounded
on the basis of the ego of the ordinary person. This quaternity roughly
represents the mental being, which has links to the Superconscient.
The second quaternity is called the
Shadow Quaternity, where the four beings of light find their opposites,
differentiated into a fourfold materialistic shadow figure grounded on the
instincts represented by the serpent. Again this is a kind of mirror image of
the Vedic act of creation, where the four Beings of Light turn into their
opposites. The Paradise Quaternity in turn is differentiated into the four
bodies of living water to be reunited as the Lapis or matter. The second
quaternity roughly represents the vital being, while the third refers to its
grounding in the physical. The fourth quaternity is called the Lapis
Quaternity, representing matter, which is depicted as emerging out of the
Rotundum or chaos, which, can be reduced to fire or, in terms of modern
physics, energy. In the language of the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother,
it can be understood as the physical being emerging from the inconscient.
Thus, the four levels of being can
be charactertized as Superconscient, Mental, Vital and Physical, which emerges
from the original Inconscient. The common denominator can be depicted as Agni,
the fire-God and energy or intelligent Force. For psychic and spiritual
integration and transformation, each level of being needs to be differentiated
by the four orienting functions of consciousness, thinking, feeling, intuition
and feeling. This results in unity of
the highest, the Anthropos, and the lowest, the Rotundum, to produce the
uroborous or the serpent biting its tail. Jung abstracted a general formula of
the Self from this fourfold quaternity, observing that man needs to assume the
role of Christ [or another realized spiritual being fully engaged with the
opposites of life] for such a complete realization and integration of being.
The quaternity can be viewed as
both static and dynamic. The static quality is represented by the Self’s
fourfold nature, with the number four [4], symbolizing wholeness. The dynamic
aspect, which refers to self-renewal, is indicated in that, in the Gnostic
formulation, each of the four levels of being is constructed by triads, where
the number three [3] refers to a dynamic developmental process. The dynamics of
the Self and the individuation process is also indicated in the alchemical
circulatio, which refers to a continuous circulatory ascending and descending
development over time, linking the heights and the depths of being.
Further Amplifications on Philemon
As far as Jung’s guru, Philemon,
who presented himself to Jung as coming from Alexandria, where the East meets
the West, is concerned, his four keys clearly opened the door for Jung to
develop a psychology firmly grounded on the symbolic value four [4], or
complete integration of being. As I amplified above, there are parallels
between his nature and that of Metatron, the chief angel of the Judeo-Christian
tradition. For further amplification, it is noteworthy that Philemon is
depicted as having kingfisher wings with their characteristic coloration and
Bull’s horns.
The kingfisher reference relates
him to the wounded Fisher King of the Grail tradition, whose wounds would be
healed with the discovery of the Holy Grail. He is wounded in the thigh or
groin, and his impotence affects the kingdom, reducing it to a Wasteland. Both the Fisher king and the kingfisher bird
are also fishers, who take fish from the water, in other words, important
contents of the psyche from the unconscious.
Christ, too, was related to fish, and his disciples were fishers of men.
The kingfisher’s beautiful turquoise/blue colors suggest spiritual
transformation and royalty. Overall, then these amplifications suggest the
nature of the spiritual task presented to Jung to be fulfilled through the
development of his system of psychology. In retrospect, there is no doubt but
that Jung brought living water to the contemporary mind and its spiritually
arid existence. When he was visiting India he had an important dream where he
was with some colleagues and he was the only one aware of the need to swim
across the channel to the Grail castle in order to fetch the Grail, which he
did. Indeed, Jung labored to bring the
Grail of truth to the West in his approach to psychology.
Regarding the Bull’s horns,
amplification takes me to Indra, the king of the Vedic gods. The parallel to Philemon begins with the
fact that that “Indra is the Bull of the radiant herd, the master of the
thought-energies….” “It is he who brings
forth the dawn and the sun, and effectuates the release of the waters.” This reminds one of the parting of the upper
waters in Jung’s dream. According to Madhusudan Reddy, Indra “embodies the
organizing and systematizing luminous intelligence beyond the whole cosmos in
its Truth-ward movement.” He represents
the Light of consciousness, impelled by force.
He is the illumined mind that brings discrimination to bear in order to
make order out of chaos. He is, in other words, the God of psychology, who
brings luminous knowledge along with the power of realization. Jung’s discovery
and championing of the archetypal psyche centered on the Self bears witness to
this. His constant teaching about the need to unite the heights with the depths
integrates the side of force and strength to the illumination from above.
Jung had a direct relationship with
the living God and a highly differentiated fourfold psyche. He may or may not
have had an inkling of the primordial act of creation itself, which included
the involvement of the four Beings of Light and their negation, but he lived
fully according to that reality. Although he specifically did not indulge in
metaphysical speculation, the final completeness and oneness of his life based
on the reality of the psyche and the realization of the mystical coincidentia
oppositorum, the reconciliation of opposites, however, suggests that he must
have had some insight into the nature of the act of creation.