October 21, 2009
- The Automatic Writings of Jung -
From an article sent by a friend. Says it all better than I have been able to:
- Jung had “spirit guides”, one of whom was named “Philemon”. Jung observed that “Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force that was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. […] Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight.” To anyone else, Philemon might be a figment of Jung’s imagination, or evidence of his madness. But Jung felt that Philemon was real – yet somehow dead, and somehow “talking” to Jung – to Jung’s mind.
- He had a life-long fascination with Nietzsche, but he realized the need to distance himself from Nietzsche for fear that he might be like him and therefore suffer the same fate: Nietzsche (1844-1900) became hopelessly insane. But more than 15 years later, Jung spoke to a “highly cultivated elderly Indian”, who told Jung that his experience was identical to many mystics. In his case, his “spirit guide” or guru had been a commentator on the Vedas who had died centuries ago. Rather than be mad, Jung felt that he had stepped into the same shoes as the ancient priests and others thought have experienced the divine.
- The text (the 7 Sermons to the Dead) is intriguing for several reasons. For one, he uses the name Abraxas to describe the Supreme Being that had first generated mind (nous) and then the other mental powers. Still, Jung did not teach the return of human essence to the Gnostic pleroma, where individuality was lost, but instead adhered to individuation, which maintained the fullness of human individuality. Most metaphysics today argue that both possibilities can be encountered – and are encountered in many religions: that the soul at its final stage can chose to melt with the One (the pleroma) or maintain its separate identity inside the One (individuation). The easiest parallel is with the hologram, in which each “replica” is unique, yet also the whole. If any “replica” was aware, and would at one point have to ask what it wanted, some would ask to surrender into the greater hologram, whereas other “replicas” would ask to retain their individual memories – even though they are part of the whole.
- As early as August, 1912, Jung had intimated in a letter to Freud that he had an intuition that the essentially feminine-toned archaic wisdom of the Gnostics, symbolically called Sophia, was destined to re-enter modern Western culture by way of depth-psychology. Of primary sources, the remarkable Pistis Sophia was one of very few available to Jung in translation, and his appreciation of this work was so great that he made a special effort to seek out the translator in London, the then aged and impecunious George R. S. Mead, to convey to him his great gratitude.
Subsequently, he stated to Barbara Hannah that when he discovered the writings of the ancient Gnostics, “I felt as if I had at last found a circle of friends who understood me.”
- Jung believed that the cosmos contained the divine light or life, but this essence was enmeshed in a mechanical trap, presided over by a demiurge: Lucifer, the Bringer of the Light. He contained the light inside this reality, until a time when it would be set free. The first operation of alchemy therefore addressed itself to the dismemberment of this confining structure and reducing it to a condition of creative chaos. From this, in the process of transformation, the true, creative binaries emerge and begin their interaction designed to bring about the alchemical union. In this ultimate union, says Jung, the previously confined light is redeemed and brought to the point of its ultimate and redemptive fulfilment.
- In The Psychology of the Transference, Jung stated that in love, as in psychological growth, the key to success is the ability to endure the tension of the opposites without abandoning the process, even if the process and its result appear to have been brought to naught. In essence, it is the “stress” that allows one to grow – to transform.
The union of opposites, the focus of the alchemist, was for Jung also the focus of the Gnostics, whom he felt had been incorrectly labelled as radical dualists, i.e. believing in the battle between good and evil – without any apparent union possible between the two. For Jung, dualism and monism were not mutually contradictory and exclusive, but complimentary aspects of reality. As such, there was no good or wrong, no order or chaos, just two opposites, who constantly created grey, and demanded of mankind to be united, transformed.
Really great post! I like that about the individuation within the one. Its alsointeresting that both he ans Steiner both had lifelong fascinations with Nietzsche.
To me its just obvious he was talking to spirits, but I guess they wrote it in such away that scientific materialists wouldn’t be overly uncomfortable.
I’ll definitely have to read some Jung.
Comment by Ted — October 21, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
I think people turn to Nietzsche in order to integrate their shadow, because Nietzsche said all these things and raised all these dilemmas that occur to bright philosophically minded people, but who are afraid to come out and say it.
Comment by Ted — October 21, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Yeah, I like that interpretation of Nietzsche. He stared into the abyss a long time, and just kept pulling stuff out till it killed him. But for those who have some understanding of why it might be necessary for a person to do something like that, his work could offer some access to that experience without actually needing to go so far in yourself.
As for reading Jung, I’ve actually found the few books of his that I did pick up rather dry and scholarly, but I don’t think I gave them much of a chance, nor did I really look through more than a a few titles. Will be making up for that now, of course.
Interestingly, there’s a book of a seminar that Jung did on “Zarathustra”. Might be a good place to find out if Jung’s work is to your liking. Strangely enough, the cover image is the “Yellow Castle Mandala” from the end of the Red Book too.
I also recommend his autobiography, one of the few such books I would want to read all the way through more than once.
Comment by Ian — October 22, 2009 @ 11:49 am
Well, I don’t think there is anything to be afraid of regarding Nietzsche. Especially if you are a mystic like Jung, who when asked if he believed in the existence of God replied “I don’t believe, I know”
I needed to read Nietzsche because I had a bunch of left over fundamentalist Christian bullshit floating around in my head and Nietzsche, especially “The genealogy of morals” was the perfect antidote.
He’s like an acid that eats away all false religious ideas. If all you have are false ideas I guess you may become an Atheist and a Nihilist. But that wasn’t even Nietzsche goal for everyone to become a Nihilist. If you get that you misunderstand him.
Comment by Ted — October 22, 2009 @ 1:50 pm
No, I was more speaking of something like you said here:
I’ve always seen the idea of the abyss as kind of the same thing, except that it eats away at all false ideas, not just religious ones. And that reading Nietzsche is kind of like the Abyss Lite, in that regard.
Comment by Ian — October 22, 2009 @ 2:58 pm
I don’t know if you want to keep talking about Nietzsche or not, because this was about Jung, but I don’t see Nietzsche as so much as a person simply staring into an abyss. I think what he was about, basically was an extreme form of individuation. He was drawing attention to how bankrupt, the Christian underpinnings of Western Civilization had become. Basically a dead concept accepted on faith. That’s the Abyss. Nietzsche was basically asking, “where do we go from here?” What type of a person is able to go anywhere from that place of a spiritually bankrupt civilization? He was saying it would take a superman.
So, anyway, I don’t see mysticism as faith based. If it is its delusional. Mysticism is not a system of authority.
I think what happens with civilizations is that Men of vision (mystics) create them and others accept their visions on faith, on authority. This is a time where we need these “Artist tyrants” these men of Vision.
Comment by Ted — October 23, 2009 @ 11:07 pm
Here is the misunderstanding with Nietzsche: Everybody thinks he’s pro-nihilist and therefore anti-Christianity;anti-God.
But really he was anti-Christian because he thought Christianity was nihilist, based on resentment and revenge fantasies. He thought Christianity was the religion of the sick and the weak and therefore against life. Anti-life.
So its safe to assume the inverse of this premise, because Nietzsche states things negatively.
Comment by Ted — October 24, 2009 @ 3:11 am
I have no problem changing topics, if that’s how the discussion goes. And I DID mention Nietzsche myself, so no worries.
I haven’t read much Nietzsche in detail, just Zarathustra, part of Beyond Good and Evil, and part of Birth of Tragedy. So I’m glad to hear someone else’s take on it. Sounds like you might’ve read a bit more of Nietzsche than I have. But what I got from Zarathustra was a very intoxicating mix of depression with excitement, anger with joy, a state of mind that seems to be desirable, but probably wouldn’t be too much fun to actually live through.
But yeah, “God is dead, what the fuck do we do?”, I like that.
Comment by Ian — October 26, 2009 @ 9:07 am
“Genaleology of morals” is reputedly his best work. Its not written in Aphorisms, though. I would read that.
Comment by Ted — October 26, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
Cool, thanks Ted.
Comment by Ian — October 26, 2009 @ 4:21 pm
I might try to get a copy of the book written by his heart throb Lu Salome. She had a lot of insights into his personality.
Comment by Ted — October 26, 2009 @ 5:31 pm
Salomé is said to have remarked in her last days, “I have really done nothing but work all my life, work … why?”
(from her wikipedia page, sounds like an interesting lady)
Also, the book’ll cost you $20.00 (+ shipping): http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/29wfr7gn9780252070358.html
Salomé’s provocative conclusion — that Nietzsche’s madness was the inevitable result of his philosophical views — generated considerable controversy.
I like that too…
Comment by Ian — October 27, 2009 @ 9:06 am
Or even less on Amazon… :)
Comment by Ian — October 27, 2009 @ 9:09 am