Jung’s Psychology of the Living God and Transformation of Individual
and Community: Part II, Jung’s Gnostic Creation Myth: The Creative Shadow
Pleroma and the Development of His System of Psychology
Abstract
Part II is about Jung’s Gnostic
creation myth, which he wrote in 1916 as an important part of his encounter
with the unconscious. He called it the Seven
Sermons to the Dead, and attributed its writing to Philemon, a winged being
he encountered in dreams and fantasies, who assumed the role of a guru with
superior insight. I refer to a Vedic creation myth commented on by Sri
Aurobindo and a creation story of the Mother as well as relevant passages from
Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri for the sake
of comparison. In all four cases there is a primordial creative Shadow and the
number of principal beings (deities) is four, suggesting that the qualitative
number four (4) is significant as a fundamental truth of existence and
individual wholeness. Jung’s myth puts more emphasis on the created world,
while Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s accounts tell a story as to how the
original luminous fourfold being turned into its opposite. Jung writes that his
early fantasies, including the one mentioned above, foreshadowed his entire
life and scientific work as a psychologist. I go through each of the seven
sermons and indicate their psychological meaning, while alluding to his developed
psychological system. I also briefly analyze two seminal initiation dreams Jung
had, one between the age of three and four and one at the age of thirty-seven.
The first dream is his initiation into the mystery of the earth, and the second
his initiation into the wisdom of alchemical transformation by the Divine
Mother as Sophia. I end this essay by discussing how the path of individuation
involves both the heart-Self centered (psychic) transformation and spiritual
ascension or spiritual transfiguration as indicated in Jung’s early fantasies.
Introduction
The Mother counseled her audience
that “we can choose from many stories… and by interiorizing or exteriorizing
oneself… which… is essentially the same thing,”
we can relive this story and thereby learn to understand and master the
psychology of life. Some people, she
observed, have done that, the ones considered as “initiates, occultists and
prophets….” [1] One individual who has done this in an in-depth and personally
related way is CG Jung, with his essentially modern Gnostic creation myth that
he wrote in 1916, some four years after he began his active confrontation with
the unconscious. [2] He began having it out with the unconscious in 1912,
elaborating his fantasies, many of which were numinous, with paintings while
engaging in written dialogues with fantasy figures until 1930, when he stopped
and earnestly took up the study of alchemy. [3]
Jung’s Initial Fantasies and his Scientific Work
The importance of this period in
the development of Jung’s system of psychology cannot be underestimated. Jung wrote:
The years… when I pursued the inner
images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else derived from this. It began
at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life
consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded
me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and
material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer
classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But
the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.” [4]
He also noted that “it took me
forty-five years to distill within the vessel of my scientific work the things
I experienced and wrote down at the time.” [5]
Jung felt that it was essential
that he abandon the tendency to aesthetic elaboration for the sake of
scientific understanding. The aesthetic attitude has the advantage of
non-judgmental openness, but cannot deal with the shadow or evil, which
requires ethical deliberation and judgment. He also understood that such inner
experiences come with ethical obligation, which, in his case, meant the need to
show people in the external world the reality of the objective psyche, not only
through his own experiences but others’ as well. [6] [7] At that time his
confrontation changed from the unconscious to the world and he began giving
many important lectures based on his own inner experiences as well as those of
his clients. [8] Thus, both the foundation for the empirical study of the
psyche and his education of others in the external world were laid as a result
of his overwhelming original experiences and dialogues with the unconscious.
Sri Aurobindo’s, the Mother’s
and Jung’s Creation Stories
Jung had no access to the primary
source material on Gnosticism that is now available, and had to rely on
fragments and derogatory and distorted accounts of the Church Fathers, who
wrote against the Gnostics. [9] Nonetheless, his Seven Sermons to the Dead is by and large a Gnostic creation myth
with contemporary relevance and a timeless message, a culminating mythological
account of a venerable spiritual tradition. [10] In the Mother’s explanation in
reference to a creation myth that she related, it is a story that is “more or
less complete, more or less expressive” that one relives. [11] Yet Jung’s
experience went well beyond taking a traditional story and trying to relive it
more or less well. His mythological story is rather a creation myth that acted
as a culmination of some four years of intense inner visions and dreams, along
with dialogues with fantasy figures and paintings. These were Jung’s subjective
experiences of the objective and archetypal psyche that he was later able to consciously
relate directly to his scientific work and relationship with the external
world. After these experiences and scientific elaboration, the reality of the
psyche was, for Jung, an established fact.
In the Mother’s creation story,
which she warned her audience not to take as gospel, the Supreme exteriorized
Himself in order to become self-aware, first as Knowledge-Consciousness and
Force. [12] In the Supreme Will, there was an inherent instinct to express Joy
and essential Freedom of being; so four Beings were objectified to begin the
developmental process of creation and the embodiment these qualities. These
Beings embodied the principles of Consciousness and Light, Life, Bliss and
Love, and Truth. As soon as there was separation between the Supreme and His
emanations through the Creative Force, immediately at the beginning of
creation, Consciousness turned into inconscience, Light became darkness, Love
turned into hatred, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. The
Creative Force turned to the Supreme and prayed for a remedy for the evil of
creation. She was commanded to penetrate the inconscience with Her
Consciousness, to precipitate suffering with Love, and falsehood with Her
Truth. As the Parashakti, a greater consciousness, a more total love and a more
perfect truth than at the original creation plunged into the created universe
in order to begin the process of redeeming the material creation by returning
it to its Source.
In Sri Aurobindo’s account of the
Vedic story, there were four kingly gods, the Luminous Beings, Varuna (Infinite
Existence and Unity of Being), Mitra (Light of Consciousness, Love and Divine
Harmony), Bhaga (Bliss and Joy), and Aryaman (Power, Effective Will and
Strength). They were entrusted with creation by the Supermind, or fourfold Savitri,
from whom they emanated. These Beings were, in fact the later Satchitananda,
Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, where Consciousness comes instinct with Force.
[13] Immediately upon separation from the Source and the act of creation the
four Beings turned into their Shadow opposites. Sri Aurobindo described this
original Fall in the following descriptive passages from Savitri, where Being “plunged into the dark,” which ultimately
saves “Non-Being’s night”: [14]
In the passion and self-loss of the
infinite
When all was plunged in the
negating Void...
Invoking in world-time the timeless
truth,
Bliss changed to sorrow, Knowledge
made ignorant,
God’s force turned into a child’s
helplessness
Can bring down heaven by their
sacrifice.
A contradiction founds the base of life:
The eternal, the divine Reality
Has faced itself with its own
contraries;
Being became the Void and
Consciousness-Force
Nescience and a walk of a blind
Energy
And Ecstasy took the figure of
world-pain.
As with the Mother’s creation story
there was eventual redemption that is alluded to in the following passages in Savitri. [15]
At last the struggling Energy can
emerge
And meet the voiceless Being in
wider fields;
Then can they see and speak and,
breast to breast,
In a larger consciousness, a
clearer light,
The Two embrace and strive and each
know each
Regarding closer now the playmate’s
face. …
In Nature he saw the mighty Spirit
concealed,
Watched the weak birth of a
Tremendous Force…
Sri Aurobindo’s account of a Vedic
creation myth and the Mother’s story are relevant to this discussion for
purposes of comparison with Jung’s account of the workings of the Primal
Creative Shadow. The advent of redemption from the workings of the Shadow
creation, in fact, ties Jung’s creation myth, to which we will now turn, to
these stories related by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead
Jung’s title for his myth is VII Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead), to which,
according to the originally published tract, he attributed its authorship to
the second century AD Gnostic, Basilides, who lived and taught in
Attributing the Seven Sermons to the Dead to Philemon is
relevant for many reasons, many of which I discuss in Part I. For purposes of
this essay, the fact that he carried four keys is the most significant fact,
for four is qualitatively an important number psychologically that symbolizes
wholeness and completeness of individual being. Moreover, in the fourth sermon,
four is “the number of the chief deities, because four (4) is the number of the
measurements of the world.” [18] Philemon, it seems, is related to the
fundamental fourfold truth of existence and individual wholeness, and held the
four keys that open the doors to authentic self-knowledge.
The Pleroma and the Principle of Individuation
In the first sermon, Philemon began
by describing the Gnostic Pleroma, which is both emptiness and fullness,
differentiated and undifferentiated, containing all the opposites in a state of
equilibrium. In fact the Pleroma has no qualities, and these are created only
by our thinking. Not thinking but being is differentiation, and therefore the
needful is to strive after one’s true nature, not discrimination and
differentiation as they are known by the intellect. The natural tendency of the
incarnated soul, he asserted, is to differentiate itself from the Pleroma and
to learn discrimination and discernment. Differentiation is the essence of the
created world including man. The prinicipium
individuationis, the principle of individuation, meaning differentiation of
being, is, in fact, a fundamental motive-force in Jung’s system of psychology.
According to Philemon, the Pleroma
is described as completely pervading all existence of the created world, and
the Pleroma is present within the human being. The created world, however, has
no part in it, which is a way of saying that it is veiled to human
consciousness. Jung actually believed that the Self not only supports the world
of duality like a reflective movie screen, a typical Advaitan metaphor, but
that the essence of the Self is in the duality itself, particularly evident in
archetypal experiences, where archetypes are “a priori structural forms of the
stuff of consciousness.” (19) The danger confronting the human being is
the seductive pull back into the abyss of the Pleroma in that it is nothingness
and dissolution, while giving up the light of consciousness and the urge
towards individuation. Here there is in essential agreement with Sri Aurobindo
and the Mother when the latter, commenting on some ideas presented by Sri
Aurobindo, argued that a superior solution resides in the goal to seek a
differentiated “Oneness which restores us to the essential Delight of the
manifestation and the becoming” rather than understanding the world to be based
on desire with “total rejection of all desire and a return to annihilation.”
(20) This was also Jung’s goal and
Philemon’s message to the dead, the unregenerate psyche of the common person
today, which will become clear below.
Abraxas, Helios and the Devil
God, said Philemon in the second
sermon, is the created world in as much as He is differentiated from the
Pleroma. He is, as such, a quality of the Pleroma. Philemon then presents the
reader with the differentiation of the two great polar opposites or contraries,
Helios, that is to say God the Sun, the summum
bonum (supreme good)
representing, fullness, generativity and Eros or relatedness, and the Devil,
the infinum malum (endless evil) representing emptiness,
destruction, dissolution and Thanatos or death. In the created world, these two
stand together as active opposites, each with discernible effect.
There is yet another God,
differentiated from the Pleroma, yet its closest approximation. He is difficult
to know as man does not perceive his power and he therefore seems less
effective than either Helios or the Devil. His name is Abraxas, and he
represents the power of reconciliation of all existential force and activity,
transcending both the God Helios and the Devil.
In John I:4 one reads: [21]
All that came to be had life in him
and that life was the life of men,
a light that shines in the dark,
a light that darkness could not
overpower
This description does not seem
significantly different than the Vedic description of original Infinite light
of Existence which had to come to terms with the darkness of the Non-Existence,
which I discuss below. However, in the Vedic creation myth there is a
development where, on creation, four Beings of light turn into their opposites,
suggesting that the original Good and Light of Existence transcends the shadow
creation, which includes both an inferior light and darkness. In the Christian
story there is no such differentiation.
Jung, consequently, felt the need
to spend a considerable amount of energy during the latter part of his life in
trying to educate the Christian world on the shortcoming of its God as the
Summum Bonum, All-Good, without a spot of darkness. According to Augustine and
other Fathers of the Church, since God is All-Good and without blemish, then omne bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine, all good from God, all evil from man, in
other words man is the original source of evil, not God. Moreover, evil itself
paradoxically has no reality and can only be privatio boni, the deprivation of good, without substance in its
own right. He was particularly concerned that this doctrine encourages people
not to take the shadow or evil seriously.
Jung was prepared to accept it as a
metaphysical truth, but in the duality of the manifest world, in a view similar
to that expressed by Sri Aurobindo, he was adamant that there is a need to
differentiate good and evil, each embodying an essential reality emanating from
a superior being. In this myth, that Being is Abraxas, Himself an unconscious
shadow reflection in time of the non-dual Pleroma. Moreover, for Jung, the
primary source of evil in the world and the author of human sins, like
everything else, is logically, the paradoxical God. Such a view takes an
excessive burden of sin off human shoulders, without discouraging the principal
of individuation, with its own motive power, which necessitates the individual
to come to terms with different levels of the shadow. Sri Aurobindo and Jung
both recognized evil as being the consequence of separation from the Self or
Brahman. The former grants evil the status of being a relative truth and “the
creation of Ignorance and the unconscious,” while “the adverse opposites,” he
argued, are specifically “creations of Life or Mind in Life” and, in the
God-ward journey of the soul, subject to discernment by the psychic being. [22]
Abraxas is the supreme power of
being in whom light and darkness are each united and transcended. It contains
all the opposites of creation in a state of unconscious complementarities. Life
is generated and regenerated by the power of Abraxas, which is impersonal,
amoral, non-discriminating and merciless. It is both the instinctual depths of
the erect phallus of Priapos, and the archetypal heights of the spirit. Abraxas is the closest approximation to the
active manifestation of the Pleroma consisting of force, endless time and
continual change. As universal, undifferentiated psychic energy Abraxas generates
both truth and falsehood, good and evil. It is the life of creation and both
deceitful reality and powerful in the world of unreality. Above all, counselled
Philemon, this God is terrible, demanding fear (awe) and admiration.
Abraxas: Primordial Creative Shadow Pleroma
In the Gnostic tradition Abraxas is
represented as a Rooster-headed god, with two powerful looking serpent legs and
a whip in his right hand and a shield in his left, often in a chariot drawn by
four white horses at breakneck speed. The rooster head suggests “vigilant wakefulness,”
the shield, protective “wisdom,” the whip the “relentless, driving power of
life,” and the serpent legs, undifferentiated but powerful energy. [23] The
four white horses suggest that despite the undifferentiated energy comprising
Abraxas and His essential play of Ignorance, there is not only wakefulness,
wisdom and the dynamic interplay of life, but the fourfold libido of purified
divine Force is drawing It on. This view is supported by the fact that
according to Sri Aurobindo, in the Vedas, while the cow symbolizes the Light of
Consciousness, the horse symbolizes the dynamism of Force. [24]
Thus it is evident that Abraxas can
be referred to as the primordial creative Shadow Pleroma, with a definite
direct relationship to the Transcendent Being. Despite its unconsciousness and
status as the essential Being of Ignorance, It is ultimately driven by the
dynamic truth of the Transcendent, however veiled to human consciousness. In fact, Jung’s unknown God, Abraxas, appeals
to three principles of Jungian psychology: (1) the concept of libido: (2) the
union of opposites that require differentiation through the individuation
process and: (3) the natural urge towards individuation that demands gradually
assimilating aspects of the unconscious Abraxas to consciousness. It also
implies the need to consciously come to terms with this undifferentiated energy
through experiences of “conflicts of duty” by the power of moral discernment.
This demands conscious access to what Jung referred to as the transcendent
function, a third position based on experience of the Self, which goes beyond
the answer given by dogmatic morality.
Transcending the Contraries of Life
The depth, complexity and relevance
of Jung’s paradoxical manner of thinking and experiencing life, which is fully
engaged in the “contradiction…. [at] the base of life” where, the divine
Reality/ Has faced itself with its own contraries,” becomes increasingly
evident as one penetrates further into his creation myth and its meaning.
[25] In his own words, Jung observed
that “The highest and the lowest, the best and the vilest, the truest and the
most deceptive things are often blended together in the inner voice in the most
baffling way, thus opening up in us an abyss of confusion, falsehood, and
despair.” [26] Here Jung is speaking of being conscious of the experiential
co-existence of a pair or more opposites, which requires more psychological
maturity than the experience of one opposite after the other. As Sri Aurobindo wrote: [26a, Savitri, p. 440]
All walks inarmed by its own
opposites,
Error is the comrade of our mortal
thought,
And falsehood lurks in the deep
bosom of truth,
Sin poisons with its vivid flowers
of joy
Or leaves a red scar across the
soul;
Virtue is a grey bondage and a gaol.
At every step is laid for us a
snare.
Alien to reason and the spirit’s
light,
Our fount of action from a darkness
wells.
The resolution to the confusing
meeting of contraries comes by appealing to the transcendent function of the
Self, which includes involvement of the psychic being, for a creative synthesis
in a third position. Jung observed that the hero “discovers a new way” to
fulfillment and wholeness of personality, and that “Personality is Tao.” [27]
By engaging the opposites of life, wrote Jung, the whole person “enters the
fray with his total reality,” allowing for the “creative confrontation with the
opposites and the synthesis in the self,” the wholeness of personality… as the coniunctio oppositorum. [28] This leads
to a reconciliation between the opposites in the God-image itself, which,
observed Jung, is “the meaning of divine service …. so that light may emerge
from darkness,” [29] consciousness from Ignorance. Conscious individuation
takes one well beyond assimilation of the personal shadow to integration of
one’s relationship to the collective and archetypal shadow, the shadow side of
the God-Image.
Philemon has already introduced the
reader to the two main oppositional forces in creation in Helios, God the Sun,
as the highest good and Its opposite the Devil, as endless evil. These two
oppositional powers are reminiscent of the observation and principal concern of
the ancient seers who saw God as Varuna, the infinite light of existence, as
the basis for Vedic perfection and primary goal, but also recognized the
obscure limitations imposed by “the dark Coverer, the adversary Vritra” who
marred creation with his all-enveloping black shadow of an unformed
Inconscience, as Non-Existence. [30] The difference between the two conceptions
is that in the Vedic myth the oppositional powers are conceived of as
extensions of the One, whereas in Jung’s creation myth they are extensions, not
of the Pleroma as the One, but of Abraxas, the Shadow Pleroma and embodiment of
creative Ignorance.
The Four Principal Deities in Jung’s Gnostic Creation Myth
In sermon four of the Seven Sermons to the Dead the reader
learns that there are actually four principal deities and that “four is the
number of the measurements of the world.” [31] There are, in addition, to the
two principal antagonists a great many goods and evils, a multiplicity of gods
and devils, including two god-devils, the “Burning one,” or Eros, and the
“Growing one,” or The Tree of Life and Logos. Along with Helios and the Devil,
they comprise the four main gods of creation. As god-devils, Eros and Logos are
not only opposites but they each contain within themselves oppositional powers
of light and shadow. It is in the mutual co-existence and interpenetration of
these two powers of being that the secret of wholeness of personality must be
discovered.
The “Growing One” represents the
spirit of civilization, the Logos of the zeitgeist. It continually creates
institutions, regulations, codes of behavior, laws and forms in order for life
to build and expand on stable and secure ground. In Western Christianity, there
is tradition, dogma and doctrine that can assist in one’s religious growth, but
it can also stultify, limit and encourage conformity. The totalitarian state is
the worst offender against the individual spirit, but the “Growing One”
functions repressively at all levels of culture, including in tribal societies,
where social beliefs, rituals, and cyclic patterns of life can squelch the
individual. In addition to essential cultural expressions and the development
of civilization, then, there is the shadow of sclerotic conservatism and
repression. The “Burning One” or Eros, on the other hand, seeks life in
creative change, the lure of adventure, risk, challenge and battle and,
according to the witness of history, conflict and violence. It rebels against
the restrictions of civilization as well as any ascetic life negating quest for
high-culture, knowledge and task specialization. Eros is also the horizontal
impetus towards knowledge of and relationship with others. The “Burning One”
thus represents the individual creative spirit and the impetus for individual
truth, but also the shadowy wildness below the veneer of civilization and
culture, both the joy and suffering of life.
In these four gods can be seen the
veiled workings of Sat Chit-Shakti Ananda and Asat. Veiled behind the Sun God
is pure Existence or Sat, behind the Devil is Non-Existence or Asat, behind the
“Growing One” as Tree of Life or Logos is Consciousness-Force or Chit-Shakti
and behind “The Burning One” or Eros is Ananda. The relevance of this
observation and the previous one about the Varuna and Vritra, is that Jung’s
Gnostic creation myth is compatible with the creation stories related by Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother and referred to in Part I, although Jung’s myth tends
to place more emphasis on the created world of Ignorance itself, whereas the
former two emphasize the act of creation and movement from the One to the
manifest world of Ignorance and Inconscience. Perhaps this difference in
perspective reflects Jung’s vocation as a psychologist on the one hand, and Sri
Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s more all-encompassing mission as the Avatar and
Divine Mother of our time—for the incarnation of the Supermind. Jung’s myth, in
fact, is not only compatible but also complementary in that its focus adds
psychological complexity and detail to the essential reality symbolically
depicted in the other stories. The same argument can be made in terms of his
system of psychology in comparison to the psychological aspects of Integral
Yoga as defined by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
The Dynamic Interplay between Logos and Eros: Intrapsychic and
Interpsychic
Jung’s myth continues to explore
the paradoxical mystery behind the intuitive concepts of the two principles of
Logos, the Word, and Eros, relatedness, and their embodiment and psychological
interplay, especially between men and women.
Following ancient tradition, Jung understood the feminine to be Mater
Coelestis, the Heavenly Mother, who comes as a white dove, and the masculine to
be Phallos the Earthly Father, manifesting as a serpent. The dove is ostensibly
feminine and represents the spiritual power that both receives and comprehends,
while the serpent ostensibly represents the giving and generating male
principle of procreation, which must receive in order to give.
In addition to Logos, the masculine
principle possesses all the characteristics of Eros and the feminine principle,
in addition to Eros, contains all the characteristics of Logos. Logos or meaning, governs the spiritual in
men and the sexual and instinctual connectedness in women, while Eros, or
relatedness, governs the spiritual in women and the sexual and instinctual in
men. Thus, each gender is blessed with one Logos and one Eros principle but in
an opposite manner. This is the basis for the mutual attraction and unconscious
projections between men and women.
There is no better example of the
conscious dynamic interplay of Eros and Logos than with Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother, the latter making manifest through her yoga Sri Aurobindo’s essential
spirit of Logos, the Word. Even though
the Mother assimilated Sri Aurobindo’s qualities and could, for example, easily
think in terms of ideas, by nature, she preferred to tell revealing stories and
explain the latter’s abstract formulations in practical terms that were
understandable to her disciples and at times, even to ashram children. Her yoga
of the cells also made her conscious of her connectedness with all life at a
cellular level, engendering a subtle influence throughout the physical
manifestation. On his part, Sri Aurobindo was also capable of making his views
understandable to others, which he does especially in conversations and in his Letters on Yoga. Nolini Kanta Gupta is
an excellent example of a male disciple who is able to stay true to his
essentially male perspective and the Logos principle in his presentation of
ideas, in particular as a conveyor of the Word according to Sri Aurobindo and
the Mother, at the same time, evidently having assimilated much of the anima or
Shakti, in his simple, direct and meaningful well-articulated essays.
In the world of CG Jung, Jung’s
writings were generally relegated to the world of ideas involving complex and
paradoxical associations, which are often difficult to follow, although he has
written some pieces in a more straight-forward and understandable
humanly-related way, including many of his letters, his direct input to his
autobiography and his essay in the book, Man and his Symbols, which he inspired
and co-authored with some of his major disciples. Jung’s extraordinary ability
to incarnate the spirit through feminine values is evident in the following
observations: “The feeling for the infinite, he wrote….can be attained only if
we are bounded to the utmost… in the experience I am only that! .... In such
awareness, we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both
one and the other. In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal
combination—that is, ultimately limited—we possess also the capacity for
becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then!” [33] Incarnation of
spiritual truths and the embodied access to the infinite requires intimate
relationship to the feminine and both her interconnectedness to all life and
definitional limits.
Jung’s female disciples, in
particular, were responsible for having disseminated his work in a way that was
understandable to the reading public. In my view, his most outstanding disciple
is Marie Louise von Franz, who not only had a powerful connection to Eros in
her life, but she had the capacity to intellectually translate Jung’s works
into meaningful and practical psychological understanding, especially in her
psychological studies of Fairy Tales. She also wrote some books and essays,
where her own capacity for engaging in discourse involving complex ideas is
very evident, indicating her assimilation of the male principle of Logos in her
thinking. Edward Edinger is a first class example of a male disciple who was
able to stay with his essentially male perspective and sense of meaning, and
yet he clearly assimilated the anima to the point of allowing the principle of
Eros to influence his writings, especially when he comments directly on some of
Jung’s more difficult works, by explaining Jung’s ideas and adding practical
considerations to bring them into psychological scrutiny and the conduct of
every day life.
According to his natural
pre-dispositions, the conscious male consequently naturally identifies with the
mind, and law and order, which is directly connected to the feminine Mater
Coelestis, the Goddess Logos. Since his spirituality “is more of heaven [and]
it goeth to the greater” there is a tendency in a man’s thinking, therefore,
towards the realm of ideas, abstraction and the spirit. [34] The principle of
Phallos and the god Eros, meanwhile, tend to act upon the masculine nature from
the unconscious, a reflection of the fact that a man's sexuality [and
instinctuality] “is more of the earth”. [35] Being consciously in touch with
his sexuality and instinctual nature, therefore, keeps a man related and
connected to earthly reality.
In contrast to the male psyche,
where the Goddess Logos rules his conscious thinking, the great carrier of
meaning for the female psyche is the god Eros, allowing women to be more
related in their thinking, and meaningfully connected in relationship and
instinctual and sexual relatedness. Her sexuality (and instinctual relatedness),
accordingly, “is more of the spirit.” [36] Thus a woman is more likely to find
meaning in sexuality and relationships than a man, where these dynamics of
earthly life lay in the unconscious and are blind.
For women, where the God Eros rules
her conscious life, the Goddess Logos, on the other hand, acts from the unconscious.
This allows the feminine psyche to function in the world, but without her
perceiving meaning there as a man does. Despite the fact that her Logos
functions unconsciously, she often does the right thing through woman’s
intuition thanks to her close relationship to the natural mind. Moreover, in contrast to men, a woman's
spirituality “is more of the earth.” [37] This means that a woman’s thinking
tends to be practical and down to earth, even when it turns to philosophy and
psychology or yoga, or any other discipline requiring mental competence.
It becomes evident from this
discussion that the dynamics of the psychic energy lying in the male psyche
differ from those which lay in the female psyche. The requirements of
individuation, which aims at wholeness, are therefore, typically, quite
different for men and for women, although the principium individuationis, the principle of individuation
functions equally in either case. The goal of individuation is androgyny and
not unisex, although, in both men and women, there is a need to come to terms
with both spirituality and sexuality and the instinctual nature. Spirituality
and sexuality (and the instinctual nature) are manifestations of the Gods and
exist objectively in their own right. Thus, the individuating psyche must learn
to detach itself from these daemons, yet not repress them, as the psyche is
subject to their laws.
Men and women must become conscious
of both the God Eros and the Goddess Logos that lay in their respective
unconscious, or else remain victimized by them. In psychological terms, there
is a need, in other words, for men to become conscious of, first their personal
shadow, and then their anima, the feminine mediatrix and bridge to the deeper
unconscious in men. There is, likewise, a need for women to become conscious of
their personal shadow and then the animus, the masculine beacon and bridge to
the collective unconscious in women. In the measure that this is not done, one
is possessed by unconscious complexes, typically meaning that the shadow
opposite of one’s conscious ego and persona delivery is expressed
unconsciously. The self-styled benign leader, for instance, deliberately acts
according to conscious notions of doing good service, while being driven by a
Mephistophelean power drive. The well-meaning husband or wife communicates
reasonably with their spouse based on the principles of communication skills
for couples, and yet there has been no conscious resolution of underlying
anger, or power and victim complexes, which continues to haunt the
relationship.
Humankind requires both life in
community as well as solitude, each ideally in harmony with both Logos and
Eros. Community gives “warmth” and “depth”, while solitude gives “light” and
“height”, says the Sermon. [38] From
a psychological perspective, community serves the purpose of generating human
warmth and depth through relationships and work in the community, while
solitude engenders the light of consciousness and spiritual elevation. Jung
reversed the normal view of life as he states that community requires
abstinence, while solitude, through such activities as active imagination and
the direct engagement of the multiple psyche requires the expression of
abundance, “prodigality.” [39] In addition to the proper attitude towards both
solitude and community, the consciously individuating psyche needs to find a
judicious balance between the two. Too much or too little of either is evil,
which is to say psychologically unhealthy, while the right measure, “as much
communion as is needful,” purifies. [40] Jung’s insights expressed here on the
nature of intra-psychic dynamics and both the interplay between men and women
and community and solitude are invaluable to the contemporary seeker for
community in a
Jung’s Initiation Dreams: Childhood and Midlife
When Jung was somewhere between
three and four years old he had an impressive dream where he climbs down a
square opening in a meadow, to find himself, after pushing aside a sumptuous
green curtain, in a well-appointed underground temple with a blood-red carpet
on a flagstone floor that ends at a platform. The central focus of the dream is
the platform with a rich golden throne upon which stands a roughly one and a
half foot thick, twelve to fifteen foot high phallus. The head of the phallus,
above which is “an aura of brightness,” has a single eye that gazes
motionlessly upward. (41)
In terms of amplification, the
Hindu tradition of Shiva’s Lingam, the sacred universal masculine generative
spirit contained in the Yoni, the feminine universal womb, is relevant. In
Jung’s dream, the masculine phallus is, likewise, standing on a rich golden
throne, the Mother’s seat as royal container. The head of the phallus has an
aura of brightness and the eye gazes steadily upward, suggesting incarnated
divinity, whose intrinsic intent is continual aspiration and vertical
relatedness to a superior entity. In the Hindu system, there are incarnated
purushas at different levels of being, including the physical, each of which is
a direct delegation from the Jivatman, the individual soul, itself an aspect of
the universal and transcendent Atman. Jung believed that he was initiated here
into “the mystery of Earth,” with her covering of green vegetation. [42] He was
made aware of the Hidden God, “not to be named,” a compensatory corrective to
an overly self-conscious orientation to the Good, and soulless Christianity,
which repressed the truths of the instinctual and earthly. [43] The square
shape of the opening has the same symbolic significance as the earth. In
alchemy the earth is a coagulation operation, which means the experience is
related to ego consciousness. Sri Aurobindo observed that the square is a
symbol for the Supermind, suggesting a relationship with truth of being. The
psychological unfolding of Jung’s personal life and the development of his
system of psychology both give rich evidence of his having assimilated the
message behind this numinous experience. This is clear in the important role
given to the serpent in the Seven Sermons
to the Dead.
Around Christmas 1912, when he was
37 years old and at the beginning of the time he referred to as his
“confrontation with the unconscious,” and not knowing what myth he was living,
while honestly acknowledging that it was not the Christian myth, he had another
initiatory dream of great importance. [44] In the dream: [45]
Jung finds himself in a magnificent
Italian loggia situated high up on a castle tower. He is sitting on a gold
Renaissance chair at a table of exquisite beauty made of emerald colored stone.
He was looking out into the distance when a white dove or gull descends and
lands on the table. The dove is immediately transformed into a little girl
about eight years old with golden blonde hair.
She runs off to play with Jung’s children, who are also there,
eventually returning and tenderly placing her arm around his neck. She suddenly
vanishes as the dove re-appears and slowly says: “Only in the first hours of
the night can I transform myself into a human being, while the male dove is
busy with the twelve dead.”
The most significant reference for
amplification of this dream is the descent of the dove during Jesus’s baptism
by John the Baptist, initiating Jesus’s ministry as the anointed Son of the
Father. The dove in the Christian tradition is the Holy Ghost and is usually
depicted as masculine. In the Gnostic tradition it is often viewed as feminine
and the embodiment of Sophia, the carrier of the Word and divine wisdom.
According to alchemical tradition, the legendary Hermes Trismegistos left
behind an emerald table, where the tenets of essential alchemical wisdom were
engraved in Greek. That the dove becomes an eight year old girl who plays with
Jung’s children suggests that Jung’s new potential relate playfully with a
youthful embodiment of wisdom. The fact that the female dove becomes human and
lands on the emerald table suggests that Jung can now potentially relate to
psychological life situations with alchemical wisdom, not just with abstract
intellectual concepts.
The enigmatic statement that the
male dove is occupied with the twelve dead during the early hours of the night,
allowing the female dove to become human, seems to suggest that when wisdom is
humanized, twelve presently dead or
repressed aspects of the psyche are being penetrated with the spirit of truth,
the male dove. As far as the dead are concerned, they are presently repressed
and unconscious, but potentially alive and conscious aspects of the psyche with
the application of Tapas or the concentration of energy-Force. Qualitatively
the number twelve refers to cosmic harmony, as suggested by the twelve signs of
the zodiac, the twelve disciples of Christ, and the twelve petals around the
Matrimandir, which, according to the Mother, represent twelve qualities of the
universal Mother. [46]
The symbolism of the dream suggests
that Jung was being directly initiated by Mater Coelestis, the Heavenly Mother,
with the Word for a life of embodied wisdom that includes a conscious
relationship to universal or cosmic harmony. The wisdom he gained is the wisdom
of alchemical transformation; it is not just individual and personal world of
the microcosm, but related to the macrocosm, ultimately to the transformation
of the collective. Jung actually began serious study of alchemy in 1926, at the
end of his experiment with the unconscious, and alchemy became the major
interpretive lens for his approach to psychology from then on. Significantly,
in alchemy, there is complete acceptance of the earthly feminine and
concretization of the spirit or incarnation of the Divine Will, which one does
not find in Gnosticism.
These reflections on Jung’s two
dreams take one to further psychological considerations on the relevance of the
serpent and the dove symbolism. Always cognitive of the complex interplay
opposites at all levels of being, according to the meaning Jung attributes to
the serpent, it is outwardly masculine and phallic, but inwardly feminine and
enkindles or is receptive to desire. In a similar way, the dove is outwardly feminine,
but inwardly masculine and represents conscious thought and messages from the
spirit and transcendence. The serpent and the dove, therefore, each make up
half the human psyche of which one must become conscious for the sake of Gnosis
or spiritual Knowledge. Although it is normally accepted that messages of
transcendence and the spirit can be helpful to leading a meaningful spiritual
life, it is not so well understood that acceptance of one’s instinctual force
and desire nature is also a sine qua non for coming in touch with one’s
wholeness.
The Path of Individuation
Following the way of the serpent
does not mean to do so blindly or unconsciously and without discipline, which
would only lead to further unconsciousness. In the language of Indian psychology
it would involve becoming further enmeshed in the kleshas of existence. But it does mean that there is a need to
consciously follow the instinctual forces of desire, even, to allow oneself to
be lead by them. This inevitably involves conflict and the need to experience
and hold in consciousness a tension of opposites, even at times apparent chaos,
in order to gain consciousness of Eros or relatedness and the heart Self or
psychic being. Like Goethe’s Mephistopheles, the serpent shows us the way in a
manner one would never chose by one’s own wit. In Gnosticism, the serpent is
both wild beast and holy counselor, the symbol of supernal wisdom. Not
repression, but loving regard for one's nature, consciousness of one’s desires
and creative imagination connect one to the path of Knowledge.
There is a need not to mistake
change, which is a movement of nature per se, with transformation, which
requires the opus contra naturam, the
transformational work against nature of the alchemists. In the alchemical view,
individuals are the unique link between the microcosm, which includes their
personal experiences and the world inside themselves, and the macrocosm, the
world of transcendental being and the world outside themselves. One is
confronted here with two aspects of the mystery of Existence that meet in the
human psyche and, consequently, relate directly to what Jung referred to as
synchronicity or the meaningful coincidence of outer and inner events. Jung
understood synchronicity to involve observable conscious experiences of general
acausal orderedness, which implies that the manifestation involves the
unfolding of a superior divine Will, the divine Shakti as manifestation of the
Purusha. At times, one can experience this reality through archetypal
experiences and synchronicity, as light penetrates the darkness of the Shadow
existence.
According to Philemon, individuals
have the task of following their own inner stars, which are their God and
Pleroma and the goal of individuation. The implication of this statement is
that God or the God-Image is an existential reality that can be experienced in
one’s individual psyche. Indeed, individuals need to attend to increasing the
light of this star, which is to say become more conscious of the God-Image in
their own soul through Tapas, or the application of effective will. As Jung
argued in Answer to Job and elsewhere, not only does man need God but God also
needs man in order to fulfill His purpose and to effect His transformation.
Engaging the power of imagination through dynamic meditation approaches such as
Jung’s methods of Active Imagination as depicted in The Red Book can allow one to become more aware of the indwelling
Godhead and Its realization in life.
Humans can be turned away from
their own God and conscious engagement in the individuation process by the
fiery outpouring of Abraxas, which is to say by the naturalistic psyche of
worldliness, gross materialism, sensuality and even false optimism and
idealism, among other things. The great danger to spiritually inclined people,
however, is that they can too easily sacrifice Abraxas or life to the star,
which is to say spiritual ambition. Humankind is placed between life and
spiritual reality and one should not identify with either. The principium
individuation is always insists on the continual refinement of individual
consciousness and neither dissolution of being in the Pleroma nor
non-differentiation of being swallowed up by Abraxas. Moreover, individuation,
it needs to be asserted, has nothing to do with ego individualism or
individualism with social interest as they are normally understood, but
differentiation of collective aspects of the individual psyche through the
Self. It involves forging a unique and homogeneous identity. Life in the
material world is indispensable to spirit, for spiritual truths are irrelevant,
Jung believes, if they cannot be incarnated in life. Consciousness is not enough; individuation
means consciousness-life.
Detachment and Involvement: Psychic Transformation and Spiritual Ascension
The path of individuation requires
first psychological detachment and then full involvement in life. A period of
detachment allows one to re-enter life with superior consciousness and ability
to assimilate new material to consciousness without losing one’s ground. First
there is a need to separate from Abraxas for the sake of becoming a separate
individual. Then the task for the separate individual is to consciously unite
with the subtle Abraxas, done by relating to one’s soul [anima/animus] and forging
a bridge to the Tree of Seven Lights. The Tree of Lights grows out of the head
of Abraxas, which in turn, is an emanation from the Pleroma. It is noteworthy
that, in Jung’s cosmology, the Tree of Life differs from the Tree of Light in
that the former refers to civilization as a play of Abraxas, which always has a
repressive side, sometimes more sometimes less, whereas the latter points to
the light of consciousness and archetypal patterns behind life. The first light
is the Pleroma, the second, Abraxas, the third the sun, the fourth the moon,
the fifth the earth, the sixth, the phallus, and the seventh, the stars, each
of which needs to be understood symbolically. The seventh light is, in fact, an
egg-golden bird or slumbering God that, when awake, leads the individual to the
star, one’s personal portal to the Pleroma.
Connection to the star, one’s God
as Pleroma, for which there is a need to increase its light by prayer or Tapas,
the concentration of energy and application of effective will, comes by way of
relatedness to Mater Coelestis, the Heavenly Mother (and the sky and birds).
Once one consciously unites with the subtle Abraxas, Agni, the Vedic inner
flame and sacrificial fire, or Phanes, the Orphic creator god, is released from
the form of the egg-golden bird or slumbering God to become a golden bird,
which leads the individual upwards to the star through the Heavenly Mother. In
Sri Aurobindo’s symbolic system, Agni refers to “the psychic fire of
aspiration, purification and Tapasya.” [47] Thus, as golden bird, the flame of
aspiration released from the Tree of Seven Lights mounts vertically by way of
sacrifice, purification and spiritual aspiration.
The flame is one and symbolizes
unity, whereas the other six lights form a multiplicity, all situated on the
Tree of Light. Since the one gives rise to the many and the many devolve to the
one, the Tree of Light itself seems to foreshadow what Jung later defined as unus mundus, one world involving both
unity and multiplicity and can be taken as an eighth factor in his archetypal
image of Being. Aspiration to the one star and Pleroma, it should be noted,
involves a highly individuated and conscious individual according to the principium individuationis, which runs
as a leitmotiv throughout the Seven Sermons
to the Dead. Although Jung made no such reference, in my estimation, the
emphasis on individuation and consciousness as well as aspiration to the
Pleroma opens up the possibility of experiencing samadhishta, a self-gathered and waking state of Samadhi, along
with its full realization in a globalized life.
Here, it is interesting to note
that Sri Aurobindo also observed that there is a sevenfold cord of being, the
mental, the vital and the physical, along with the One as the triple Sat Chit
Ananda and the link mind, the Supermind, the spiritual fourth, along with an
eighth cord, the individual psychic being. The psychic being naturally aspires
towards Truth, which it knows through feeling. The Supermind or Truth mind
links the multiplicity of the mental, vital and physical creation with the
unitary spiritual reality of Sat Chit Ananda.
One can, in any case, ascertain a
similar archetypal pattern and order in each case with the need to consciously
relate to unity in multiplicity by increasing the light of the star and
incarnating the spirit in life in Jung’s case, and in incarnating the Supermind
in the case of Sri Aurobindo. With Jung there seems to be emphasis placed on
becoming conscious of the archetypal patterns behind the Shadow creation itself
which necessitates involvement of the soul and the psychic transformation in
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s terminology, and then spiritual transformation,
involving vertical aspiration towards the star, through intense relatedness
with the Heavenly or Divine Mother. In terms of Vedic symbolism this is the
work of Aryaman, with his aspiration and application of effective will and
strength through Tapas. In contrast to Jung, Sri Aurobindo’s symbol system puts
emphasis on the triple transformation, psychic, spiritual and supramental,
relationship with Sat Chit Ananda as well as with a relatively well-defined
Supermind, its principle of creative ordering, at least in comparison to the
unifying function of the Tree of LIght in Jung’s cosmology.
True Gnosis involves Knowledge of
the heart and not that of the head or ego.
This is the real goal of individuation and Jung’s Gnostic psychology. A
supreme example of this Gnosis is Jung himself, who managed to assimilate to
consciousness a considerable amount of the fullness of the Pleroma and its
Shadow creation, while communicating to the world a path of Knowledge that
includes a full life in the broad sense of the word and its psychic, or
heart-Self centered transformation and spiritual transfiguration. An examination
of the two dreams reported in this paper provides ample evidence for the former
assertion and his later visions, which I discuss in Part III, for the latter.
Some of his major disciples see him as a prophet in the old Hebrew sense of the
word, where prophet means one who speaks with divine inspiration. Given his
outstanding achievement in the development of a complex and detailed integral
psychology, his mana personality, his
remarkable inner experiences, and the fact that his life and work are one, in
Hindu nomenclature, Jung would certainly be identified as a Vibhuti. If Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother were the Avatars of the Supermind, then Jung was a
Vibhuti for the currently incarnating Deity, the living God.
My methodology in all the papers in
the Four Part Series on Jung was to refer, first and foremost, to Jung’s
visions and dreams and what he himself said and wrote. In this way I was
always being faithful to his inner life and myth and his own
declarations. In order to bring some measure of understanding to them, I
applied the method of amplification and brought disciplined imagination and
thought to bear. I also referred to the thought of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
mainly to show similarities, but also to show contrasts. In Part III, I used
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s words to compare and contrast, but mainly for
purposes of explication and mediation of three of Jung’s late visions and
dreams and what he, himself, wrote and said about them and related
subjects. I always stuck closely to Jung’s inner life and its outer
manifestation.
I have been driven to relentlessly
study Jung, and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother together for some forty years as a
vocation stimulated by my own inner life. I am not classifying Jung,
categorizing him or judging his level of consciousness from an external vantage
point, which I would consider to be totally inappropriate. I am only trying to
open up understanding of the wholeness of his life and the place of his
psychology in the world by bringing explications to bear on Jung’s inner life,
mainly from the thought of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, who, surely, have the
largest vision and understanding of anybody on spiritual and psychological
matters. I believe that I logically applied explanatory material from the
former’s writings and what the latter is reported to have said. If this
means that I come to some tentative conclusions about Jung’s spiritual
attainment, it is based on my heart-felt engagement in the process.
At the same I realized in the
process of writing these papers, especially Part III of the series, that I may
be crossing the line of what some people might consider to be taboo or out of
limits. I took the freedom to proceed with my writing, nonetheless, as I
believe it is most important to follow one’s inner truth even if it eventually
proves to involve error or miscalculation.
References
[1] The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, Questions and
answers: 1957-58, Vol. 9, p. 206
[2] CG Jung (2009), Philemon Series. The Red Book: Liber Novus,
Sonu Shamsdasani, editor. Preface by
Ulrich Hoerni, Translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani.
[3] CG Jung (2009), Philemon Series,
The Red Book: Liber Novus, Sonu Shamsdasani, editor; Preface by Ulrich Hoerni, Translated by Mark
Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani, New York: WW Norton & Company, p. vii
[4] CG Jung (1965), Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recorded
and edited by Aniela Jaffé; Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston, Revised
Edition,
[5] Ibid., p. 199
[6] CG Jung (2009), Philemon Series,
The Red Book, Kyburz, John Peck, and
Sonu Shamdasani,
[7] CG Jung (1965 Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 199
[8] CG Jung (2009), Philemon Series,
The Red Book: Liber Novus, p. 219
[9] Stephan A Hoeller (1994), The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to
the Dead,
[10] Ibid., p. 32
[11] The Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, Questions and
answers: 1957-58, Vol. 9, p. 206
[12] Ibid., pp. 206-08 passim
[13] Sri Aurobindo (1971), The Secret of the Veda, pp. 421-64
passim
[14] Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol: pp. 140-41
[15] Ibid., p. 141
[16] CG Jung (1965), Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 378-90
passim
[17] CG Jung (2009), Philemon
Series, The Red Book: Liber Novus p.
226
[18] CG Jung (1965), Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 385.
[19] Ibid.
[20] p. 8
[21] John 1:4, The
[22] Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Vol. 18, pp. 597, 606
[23] Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of
the Veda, pp. 132-151 passim
[24] The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, p. 84
[25] Savitri, p. 141
[26] CG Jung (1974), Collected Works, The Development of
Personality, Vol. 17, Translated by RFC
[26a] Savitri, p. 440
[27] CG Jung (1974), Collected Works, The Development of
Personality, Vol. 17, Translated by RFC
[28] CG Jung (1965), Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 337
[29] Ibid., p. 338
[30] Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Vol. 10, p. 448
[31] CG Jung (1965), Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 385
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid., p. 325
[34] Ibid., p. 387
[35] ] Ibid.
[36] ] Ibid.
[37] ] Ibid.
[38] Ibid., p. 388
[39] Ibid.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid., p.12
[42] Ibid., p.13.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid.p. 171
[45] Ibid., pp. 171-72
[46] The Mother (La Mère) (1982), L’agenda de Mère: Volume XIII: 1972–1973,
Agenda de L’action supramentale sur la
terre,
[47] Dictionary of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga,