Carl Jung

Circle Symbolism and Consciousness Part 1 - Intro

Stochastic Cathedral

In order to address the hidden significance of Taoism touched on but not explicitly covered in Jung’s commentary I’m going to have to add some explanations of my own which are external to CJ’s commentary.  And while the title of this article is on Circle Symbolism and Consciousness I have first to cover or at least mention some basic ideas about the nature of consciousness to make sense of the circle symbolism that’s to follow.

A survey of theories of consciousness over the last 200 years reveals that a great many people have puzzled over the true nature of consciousness only to find it as slippery a subject matter as gravitation, or light, or God.  In fact for many the difficulties have appeared so numerous and insurmountable that they’ve simply given up.  For example, in failing to understand anything concrete about consciousness, some contemporary philosophers have decided to take a more aggressive stance and simply argue against consciousness ever having been a real thing in the first place, taking solace in viewing consciousness to be some sort of accident or epiphenomena of matter or possibly a grammatical error that crept in somehow.

But while I’m definitely sympathetic with the difficulties faced by these researchers I nevertheless feel it important to point out how their attitudes really only serve to reveal how deep the depths of denial can go.  I consider the denial of consciousness to be a mental illness since in denying one’s consciousness one is also unwittingly denying one’s own existence.

Looking further we find other philosophers who have gotten lost by viewing consciousness in terms of Kantian polemics-one gets the impression, so as to chum with physicists who ironically as a group no longer seem to care.  The chief remaining areas of consciousness research currently center around neuroscience and brain physiology.

In my view the error all these researchers have in common is that they’re unconsciously attempting to treat consciousness as only another object of experience.  The typical physiologist for example has sought to find consciousness first by cataloging the parts of the brain, then by investigating the brain’s chemistry, and finally by creating theories and algorithms of neural nets, etc.  But consciousness still slips away at every turn even as they make seemingly fantastic announcements about their prowess in creating mind reading helmets and the like.  And the true nature of consciousness will continue to slip away from them, not because there’s anything wrong with their methods or data, but because their preconceptions render them blind to its true nature.

What are the reasons they’ll continue to fail?  First, it’s necessary to clearly and comprehensively recognize the differences between oneself and an object.  Unfortunately in today’s world this turns out to be a rather tall order in that the vast majority of people really have no clear and accurate notions about their own subjective natures versus the objects they deal with every day.  Predominant social views are so in favor of objects and object related thinking that many persons have little or no inner content other than that supplied by the world.  And since this is a comprehensive social phenomenon it’s also overwhelmingly reflected in the thinking and views of the professionals who are accepted into positions of authority.

Psychology has to some extent attempted to right the balance between the inner and the outer but with few exceptions it too has proved to be a product of the general life out of balance.  In my view one of the exceptions is Carl Jung who I believe correctly saw both the nature and extents of how out of balance contemporary life has become.  In my next entry I’ll try to address exactly why finding the true balance between subject and object is so important.