Carl Jung

Circle Symbolism and Consciousness Part 3

Shiva’s Wheel

It would take a book length treatment to convincingly explain what consciousness is starting from the standpoint of common daily experience - something I can’t possibly do in this format.  Consequently I’m simply going to present my views on what consciousness is.  These views aren’t a complete picture but the minimal conceptual picture needed to set the context for the presentation of circle symbolism and consciousness.

Subject, Emanations and Objects

I would like to start by defining two irreducible types of mutually arising and mutually conditioning realities called: subject and object.  Subject and object are not equivalent realities, but nevertheless represent two states of the same active reality.  In my view a subject emanates its reality which continues and transforms to eventually create objects.  Objects only arise from emanations which in turn only arise from a subject.  A subject’s emanations continue to undergo transformations somewhat independently of the subject.  These emanations broadly speaking start as relatively unconstrained energies which eventually acquire form.  From there they may under certain conditions turn into objects with fixed constraints.  Objects are therefore special cases of emanations radiating from a subject.

The Primal Subject and its Emanations

So far I’ve described the natural order of propagation from a subject to an object as occurring through the intermediary of the subject’s emanations.  Simplified it would look something like this:

Subject –> Emanations –> Objects

But what is the subject like before any emanations have arisen let alone any objects?  My take on it is as follows: the subject prior to any emanations has the characteristics of being completely alive, invisible - that is without form, luminous, of pure awareness, creative, expressive, and unconstrained in any way.  (I’ll try to explain these descriptions later.)

Based on the characteristics listed above we could call the subject prior to emanations or objects the ‘undifferentiated subject,’ because its nature is more or less unmodified by distinctions of any type.  Other ways of referring to the undifferentiated subject are; the primal, unconstrained, unclothed, naked or un-manifested subject. 

But in order to avoid confusion we also need to supply a name for the subject when seen from the perspective of its emanations and in light of the existence of objects.  I would refer to this aspect of the subject as the differentiated subject, the conditioned subject or the clothed subject.  Other ways of referring to the conditioned subject might be as the constrained, modified, superimposed, consequent or manifested subject.

I’ve described the primal subject as undifferentiated in order to try and define its original nature independent of emanations and of objects.  But the reality is that the primal subject can’t be separated from its emanations since they are a natural expression of the subject, just as for example, a human body radiates heat.  If the human body stops radiating heat for very long it’s no longer a human being but a dead body.  The main difference between the two is that the primal subject has no visible body.

So far I’ve given a preliminary description of the primal un-manifested subject but I have yet to describe the nature of the primal subject’s emanations.  I might describe the nature of a subject’s emanations as a pulse, a wave front, a throb, sweat, heat, light, and in fact all forms of radiating energy.  In fact all subjects emanate what they are, just as we can feel the body heat of another person, see the flaking skin, hear the words coming from their mouths, feel or see the exhalation of their breath, and witness the actions of their limbs.

Now it isn’t too hard to see that normally what we emanate we in some way cast off from our nature.  It separates from us but also carries something of us in its composition.  When we cast something off it continues, changing form and possibly its chemical composition either slowly or quickly until its emanations reach a final limit where its nature has changed so much that its either absorbed into other objects, is dissolved or it petrifies and eventually crumbles.

According to my view all objects are the emanations or cast offs from either one subject or of many subjects depending solely on one’s perspective.  In a world consisting of a single subject it would be the subject’s experience of what grows from it.  In a world of multiple beings it would be the accumulated manifestations of many different orders of beings in different phase relations to each other.

While a great deal of explanation is still needed for the views I’ve presented so far I think before we go any further it’s important to clarify some things about the primal subject.  When I refer to the primal subject as completely alive I mean explicitly it cannot die.  The first and primal law of reality is life and the type of life I’m referring to here isn’t life opposed to death.  The type of life I’m referring to here is un-manifest life which is purely creative and completely unconstrained.

Also important to understand to make sense of this exposition is that the primal un-manifest subject exists independently of space, time, and matter.  These attributes don’t constrain the primal subject in any way whatsoever.  In fact, space, time and matter are species of emanations arising from the un-manifested subject and not occurring before it.

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Circle Symbolism and Consciousness Part 2 – Intro

Sun Throne

In order to set the stage for my depiction of the nature of consciousness I first need to lay out two fundamentally different experiences we have as human beings.  The first is the experience of oneself as a unique subject and the second is to all objects.

Neither experience is new to us, as we live with them day in and day out.  Its only when we have to explain them, that we may become aware of difficulties in doing so.  Some of these difficulties may have to do with our taking subjective and objective experiences for granted.  For example, we may realize for the first time that we never fully sorted them out before.  Or we might suspect there are difficulties with the terms themselves.  Maybe the terms ’subject and object’ are inadequate simplifications of complex realities and just can’t do justice to the complexity of life?

Nonetheless, while the difficulties in sorting out the natures of subject and object are quite real, it’s also possible we simply haven’t yet learned how to handle the terms effectively.  I’ll be giving my take on what subject and object mean to me in my next several posts, but what I can say now is that as a subject I can encounter the world and establish my own particular take on what that reality is.  As a subject, I have my own reality or space in which I can consider my experience independently of whatever the world presents to me.  This independence from the given presentation of reality is what I call myself - the subject.

The other issue I want to mention is life.  In my view life is greater than subject and object as we normally use the terms.  I feel the omnipresent reality of life defines the normal subject and all objects.  Where I am - there is life, because as an experiencer I am someone who perceives and to some extent knows about reality.

My views above may sound like Descartes, however I’m not making thinking the only means of knowledge, because I recognize that the presentation of reality has its own content independently of me as well as being a living activity.  As far as its unpredictable side, what I’m calling life might be considered to be similar to Carl Jung’s unconscious.  But unlike Carl Jung’s unconscious, life is present in both our conscious and unconscious states.  Life then is a larger reality that holds both the conscious and the unconscious.

So what relationship does the subject have to all the objects in the world and to other subjects?  This seems to be a very crucial question to forging an approach to life that works effectively with a living reality that’s new along with what’s already been given.  And this is the question I’ll be addressing in the next series of posts.

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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.

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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.

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