Carl Jung

The Light of the Tao

The Ein-Soph Chalice

s28 “Human nature and life are contained in the ‘light of heaven’ and, according to the Hui Ming Ching, are the most important secrets of the Tao. ‘Light’ is the symbolical equivalent of consciousness, and the nature of consciousness is expressed by analogies with light.”

I differ with Carl Jung’s statement above which considers the light referred to in the Hui Ming Ching to merely be a “symbolical equivalent of consciousness.” Neither do I consider the light referred to in the Hui Ming Ching to be an analogy for consciousness, but rather indistinguishable from the primary nature of consciousness. Needless to say, I’m aware this might be for some a controversial claim, but is it possible CJ is here glossing over something he didn’t fully understand or have experience with? I think his repeated disclaimers against a westerner having a comprehensive understanding of the subtle secrets of Taoism argue that his exposition here is itself somewhat preliminary and there would necessarily have to be errors in it.

Now I don’t claim to have exacting knowledge of all the elements of Taoism, far from it, but I can certainly offer a correction in this one area at least. Namely that the light referred to is neither symbolic, neither is it an analogy for consciousness. In general CJ is correct in that the word ‘light’ is widely used to denote consciousness or comprehension, but this certainly isn’t all that’s meant by the Hui Ming Ching.

In a previous post ‘The Third Viewpoint,’ I argued consciousness is actually the feeling of existence that results from experiencing oneself in relationship with and against objects. There I explicitly limited the meaning of the word existence from normal usage in order to help make clear the significance of the phrase “That which exists through itself is called the Way.” The type of consciousness referred to there was consciousness separated out alchemically into person and object, or everyday consciousness. But due to space limitations in the blog format I didn’t then mention there’s also another state of consciousness which isn’t dependent on separation into person and object.

This other state of consciousness actually exists independently of any bifurcation into person and object and its chief characteristic is light. I would call this light-filled consciousness pure and undifferentiated consciousness. In contrast to this pure, undifferentiated, and light-filled consciousness everyday consciousness is a separated consciousness broken out into many senses, many sensations, many persons, and many objects in multiple time-space moments.

I’d like to offer an example to try to explain what this pure consciousness is like. In middle level education a science demonstration is often made where a color wheel with different rays of solid colors is placed to rotate on a motor. When the color wheel is rotated quickly enough the different solid colors all blend into a white spinning wheel supposedly showing to the audience how all colors are contained in white light.

Though the example has its limitations it does essentially describe the relationship between our space-time world of persons and objects and its relationship to the secret country referred to in the Hui Ming Ching. If we imagined each space time moment of our experience to be condensed together we would see all the colors of our everyday world condensed into nothing but a pure white light. What’s more it wouldn’t just be colors that were condensed together, but every feeling, every perception, and every object from our daily experience.

The chief characteristics of this condensed daily world would be that it is pure light-awareness without separate objects, it has a billowing character like movement in place, it is completely freeing of anxiety and fear, and full of mysterious creative potential. Rather than describing it as simply white light it would be more correct to describe it as luminous life/awareness. But most important of all is the recognition the experience this luminous life/awareness makes abundantly clear which is that it is completely real and not dependent on anything else for its reality.

So when the Hui Ming Ching talks about the secret country and kindling the light there, it’s not referring to an allegorical reality or to a symbolic consciousness of such a reality but to an actually real independent reality from that of the normal physical world. Moreover, its reality is ‘in kind’ to the world of everyday consciousness but condensed into a luminous and self-existent continuum of luminous feelings and potentials. The relationship between the two is that our experience of our daily world is derived purely from this luminous life-filled awareness of condensed awareness. What some of the relationships are between these two views on reality will be gone into in future posts.