Carl Jung

Know Thyself Completely

February 18, 2008 – 2:22 am

Inner Light

s28. “If thou wouldst complete the diamond body with no outflowing, diligently heat the roots of consciousness and life. Kindle light in the blessed country ever close at hand, and there hidden, let thy true self always dwell.”

Human nature to begin with is painfully incomplete, but this fact only dawns upon us slowly. Our schooling is to learn to develop our talents and find a place in the world but if we’re truly honest with ourselves we see that neither our training nor our accomplishments have brought us completeness. Left with no viable alternatives we doggedly chase after perfections even as our lives continue to crash down around our ears.

Completeness however, isn’t perfection. Completeness means bringing to light and integrating both what we know and currently don’t know about ourselves. Completeness means that all these qualities become accessible to us as living qualities which when integrated in us do nothing less than miraculously promote life. Perfection on the other hand has to do with feelings and concepts about what life should be like versus what it is. Perfection always falls short of reality because it fails to recognize life isn’t something that can be fully objectified.

Historically, the secret method in all true esoteric development has always been to overcome what is one-sided in ourselves not through perfecting the qualities we already have or desire, or by suppressing the qualities we consider to be bad or evil, but by awakening the qualities we already have hidden in us and which consequently are unknown to us. Once these experiences are illumined they supply the necessary completeness and naturally harmonize what we already consciously know. We see then that previously we only experienced half of reality at best, much like listening to the most beautiful music in the world but with only half the wavelength present. This is the deeper meaning of ‘Know thyself’ which goes far beyond any type of self-evaluation.

Lighting up or kindling the hidden and dark aspects of one’s fundamental nature means nothing less than seeing the hidden forces for what they are rather than what we fear them to be. We then discover that their disruptive energies are only disruptive because they’ve been put out of balance with the traits and attributes we’re already conscious of. We further discover on lighting up these hidden psychological forces that they’re completely normal forces that have only become diseased by being hidden and repressed; to use a mild example much like prolonged living underground causes a natural deficiency in vitamin D and an increasingly unhealthy pallor.

Consequently, when these previously hidden psychical forces are successfully integrated into the general life of a human being they become as healthy as any we can imagine. Only artificial isolation and fear make them unhealthy. Isolation and magnification serve to tear single features out of our being simultaneously bringing everything else into disharmony. But the process of lighting them up in consciousness reintegrates what’s been inaccessible to us.

This process of lighting up the hidden aspects of human nature through a kindling of consciousness and life takes a circular course around the human body and also within it. This kindling cycle in oriental training most typically starts with the breath since the breath is the primary means by which what is outside of us in the outer world rhythmically enters into us in our inner world. Using consciously activated but still rhythmical breathing one can activate the unavailable vital energies stored in the human body. If the process is successful what are released in consciousness are alchemical images or symbols of the forces stored there.

s39. “The circular movement thus has the moral significance of activating the light and dark forces of human nature, and together with them all psychological opposites of whatever kind they may be. It is nothing less than self-knowledge by means of self-brooding (Sanskrit tapas). As similar archetypal concepts of a perfect being is that of the Platonic man, round on all sides and uniting within himself the two sexes.”

Though it’s not mentioned in Jung’s text it should be mentioned here that this process doesn’t only occur by integrating polar opposites on the circle but also by successively activating adjacent parts of the circle. In my view this appears to be the hidden function behind all forms of circumambulation-primitive, cultural, religious, and spontaneous in that the body attempts to regulate and align what is otherwise impossible for the conscious mind to regulate and balance out.

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Completing the Tao

February 10, 2008 – 7:20 pm

Soul Cluster

s37. “The unity of the two, life and consciousness, is the Tao, whose symbol would be the central white light, also mentioned in the Bardol Thodol.”

s28. “If thou wouldst complete the diamond body with no outflowing, diligently heat the roots of consciousness and life. Kindle light in the blessed country ever close at hand, and there hidden, let thy true self always dwell.”

I believe Carl Jung does quite a good job in this chapter of summarizing the process of completing the Tao. The actual task consists of alchemically reuniting and harmonizing what is severely repressed in individual human life through an esoteric process of heating both consciousness and life. The process itself is quite complex because it requires nothing less than accessing elements of our being which are completely hidden from ourselves.

The character of this hunt isn’t like looking for Easter eggs, as anyone who’s been involved in it will vouch. Although at times it may seem like an Easter egg hunt at other times its quite brutal because it involves seeing things about ourselves that we’re very embarrassed and fearful of. These are miserable things which we’ve hidden so deep that we’ve completely forgotten about them in their original forms but which now plague us in unforeseen ways.

Why they plague us is due to the psychological mechanism of projection where attributes and qualities we can’t accept or harmonize in ourselves are unconsciously seen outside of us or invested in other people. Besides our own psychological masks we place masks on others or we look for others who are already using those particular masks. As a result, our inner conflicts are played out with others as outer conflicts which occur almost daily as endlessly repeated miscommunications and irrational reactions.

These hidden psychological forces drive us to act them out without our knowing why we’re acting as we are or why others act as they do. What is hidden seeks to express itself and come into consciousness but sensing disruption of our established identity and prerogatives we repress these forces both in ourselves and as they may appear in others.

The methods used for repression are many but it would be a sidetrack to go into them now since the current chapter isn’t concerned with them. What’s more important here is where these hidden forces are actually hidden. If we believe as we’re commonly taught that these forces exist only in our brain or only in our emotional memory then we would be very surprised to find out that they actually impact our physical bodies in a variety of places. But even more startling and hard to credit from an everyday view is that many of these hidden psychological forces also reside just outside the physical body encasing it in their proximity in a type of roughly circular enclosure.

s38. “The ‘enclosure,’ or circumambulation is expressed in our text by the idea of ‘circulation.’ The circulation is not merely movement in a circle, but means, on the one hand, the marking off of the sacred precinct and, on the other, fixation and concentration. The sun-wheel begins to turn; the sun is activated and begins its course.

Psychologically, this circulation would be the ‘movement in a circle around oneself,’ so that all sides of the personality become involved. ‘The poles of light and darkness are made to rotate,’ that is, there is an alternation of day and night.”

What is this inner solar system the Taoist alchemists are talking about? I’ll go into this next time.

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The Third Viewpoint

February 4, 2008 – 12:49 am

Jump into the Unknown

s27. “That which exists through itself is called the Way.”

s27. “The subtlest secret of the Tao is human nature and life.”

The Hui Ming Ching says “That which exists through itself is called the way.” The wording is significant because the way exists ‘through itself’ and not ‘by itself.’ Something existing through itself means an ongoing process, and in this case a living process. What’s more the phrase ‘exists through itself,’ implies a cycle as part of the process. It suggests something emerges through its own activity. But what exactly is the nature of this cycle?

So far we know that a process is implied because the Way is a living thing and is said to exist through itself. The word ‘through’ implies travel, movement or process of some sort. So the question we’re left with is what kind of process results in existence?

This of course is a trick question because the answer depends on our concept of what existence is. The typical concept we’re taught to believe is that things exist in and of themselves and that neither you nor I are necessary for them to exist. They just are and we may come along and encounter them—or not, as the case may be. This view of reality might be labeled in Jung’s terminology an extroverted attitude—one encounters a readymade reality of independent and particular objects that one has to come to some stance or accommodation with, solely based on the nature of the objects.

In contrast to this there is a corresponding introverted attitude where the emphasis of the interaction between self and world is placed on the self rather than on objects. Though, seemingly self-centered from the viewpoint of the extrovert it’s also a truism that without persons to experience the objects of the world there is no world as such. Everything we can talk about or refer to is due to a person or some sort of living being who is experiencing it. Experience requires sentience, sensitivity, reactiveness, etc., and there’s no way of getting around it.

There’s also another much rarer viewpoint I call the third viewpoint. The third viewpoint is independent of the extrovert and introvert views but can perhaps best initially be understood by seeing its relationship to the extrovert and the introvert attitudes. The third viewpoint arises when we recognize that the objects in the world we experience are fully real—meaning largely independent of us, but that they nevertheless exist only because of us.

Viewing reality from the third viewpoint means existence isn’t something independent of us. Neither is existence something that was here before we were. Rather existence arises due to a process which splits an undivided reality into subject and object. In this third viewpoint existence isn’t an already given thing but it arises because the perceived and perceiver mutually condition each other. What is undivided has transformed itself into polarized qualities where each quality has acquired a distinct but not absolutely independent reality through the other.

This third viewpoint has three irreducible components–objects, feelings, and consciousness. Each of these parts must be present for the others to be present, because they all mutually define each other in daily experience. In fact the experience of isness or existence only arises because something stands over and against us, denying us complete control over it, maintaining its own reality and in the same action giving boundaries to our own sense of self.

Objects stand as brute irreducibles over which we have limited power. They become the rock upon which our sense of individual existence is based. Feelings by contrast express the vector content of our inner experience as physical, emotional, and conceptual valuations. Consciousness in this scheme as you may have guessed is really the feeling of existence. An unbiased review of experience shows the sense of existence only occurs when we are consciously experiencing separate content either in the form of objects or in the form of inner sensations. The contrast is most easily made clear to ourselves when we consider the experience of dreamless sleep in our lives.

For extroverts external objects are the ultimate referents to their experience of themselves, while for introverts inner feelings are the ultimate referents of what is real or existent. The extrovert recognizes most strongly the necessity external objects demand of us while the introvert most strongly recognizes the necessity self-continuity requires. The introvert recognizes that objects have no meaning if they will never come into contact with them in any way.

Rendering freely, something originally undefined emerges through itself as both itself and not itself and in so doing experiences existence. While the content of its experience is evenly divided between what it is and what it isn’t, it experiences life or consciousness of its world and of itself. When the content of its consciousness is primarily comprised of objects the existence of the objects is primary and the attitude is primarily extrovert. When the content of consciousness is instead primarily focused on inner feelings, thoughts, and symbols, then the continuity of self-consciousness predominates.

Something previously undefined as separate parts emerges into a process of interacting and opposing parts which create experiences. Existence arises through the interplay of self and not-self as mutually conditioning forces and that experience of existence is consciousness. Stated in the converse when consciousness arises separate objects also arise as it. When consciousness ceases objects cease to appear in it. Likewise when objects arise consciousness is there and when objects cease consciousness dissolves.

Jung’s unconscious is then pure potential, something unbounded and unfettered by limitations, but also unformed. So when limitations arise so also does consciousness. When resistance arises so does consciousness. However, when consciousness arises so can knowledge. The very act of cognition is the experience of existence. It’s the experience of both other and of self. It’s also the experience of absolute necessity, freedom, and the relativity between them. The conscious arises from the unconscious and in turn the conscious fades into the unconscious.

s13. “The wise Chinese would say in the words of the I Ching: When yang has reached its greatest strength, the dark power of yin is born within its depths, for night begins at midday when yang breaks up and begins to change into yin.”

Both the character and content of experience arises as part of a process whose very nature is to bring things into existence in order to be experienced by a living being as that experience. The external objects as well as the sense of individual existence are mutually arising and mutually conditioned. As mutually conformed pairs of dynamic opposites the self and objects are completely bound to each other but temporarily separated or polarized. So we have in the Hui Ming Ching: “The subtlest secret of the Tao is human nature and life.” A human being fulfills this recipe exactly. A human being is a creature in which self-limitation by means of the other and the real experiencing of that limitation due to the other turns consciousness of objects into consciousness of self or self-knowledge (Jung’s individuation).

By adding an adequately developed self-knowledge a human being adds a rich inner world to a rich outer world. But when they see the limitations inherent in a strictly self-oriented viewpoint they then become ready to add the third viewpoint which brings back the objective outer content as connected or synchronistic with the inner self. With the third viewpoint pointed to by the Taoist teachings knowledge becomes action that transcends both self and object while being concretely experienced as both.

What the characteristics and limitations of this process are I’ll explore elsewhere.

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The Secret of the Golden Flower - Summary 2

January 27, 2008 – 1:35 am

Inner Summits

The chapter ‘Modern Psychology Offers a Possibility of Understanding’ is a compressed enunciation of the fundamental problems facing human beings psychically. However, Jung’s treatment of the nature of the problem, its reality and scope is quite brief. Nonetheless, he does give the primary method for solving the difficult psychical problems human beings encounter. The method he gives is to allow the unconscious to communicate its solutions to the psychical problems one encounters in life.

All of this however, might come across as deceptively simple to the reader which makes me feel the material calls out for unraveling and elaboration. In principle by using different terms, giving new examples, and restructuring the narrative it should be possible to bring new facets to light. But in practice since this is only a blog entry and not a book I have to be content to give only a couple of clues to this unraveling, hoping the reader will add their own insights to the discussion.

Jung himself gives us an important key concept for unraveling what this section is about. He uses the term ‘a self-regulating system.’ By self-regulating system he essentially means a living being. A living-being is self-regulating while a mechanical system is externally constructed or programmed to regulate itself. A mechanical system doesn’t define its own programming whereas a living being can.

Self-regulating also implies something not necessarily self-evident. We have to ask what is being regulated. We might in the case of temperature say we want to be comfortable, but comfortable is a relative term existing only within specific contexts. Like Goldilocks we don’t want to be too hot or too cold, which means that what we’re regulating is between extremes of opposites, like very hot and very cold.

If this framing of our human psychological problems is accurate then all of a sudden the Taoist texts appear very relevant since they define The Way as flowing through the middle of extreme opposites. According to the Taoist views we find ourselves living in niches or valleys created by impassable mountains, whose unscalable peaks are clouded over and rarely seen by us.

Furthermore, as self-regulating systems who are alive we can’t be content with mechanical formulas. We often find creating harmony within the harsh extremes of life is far more complex than any mechanical solutions can offer. Solutions are frequently entirely individual because they’re relative not only to local contexts but to countless specific decisions in each individual life.

An example of this is visible in the meandering course of rivers. When rivers are misguidedly straightened from their meandering windings, their waters begin to move too quickly resulting in the destruction of their various ecosystems in the process. When a natural river is straightened artificially, flash floods bring trees, rocks and silt speeding through resulting in violent damage to the terrain and water quality, also killing fish and destroying vegetation. By contrast, the naturally meandering river builds up its course through its own processes thus creating natural brakes that regulate the movement of water allowing ecosystems to grow.

Likewise as modern human beings learning under the burdens of accumulated culture we’ve become increasingly self-conscious and dissuaded from simply following our natural instincts. But as our aims have become more abstracted from nature we’ve also become more direct in achieving them. Similar to the rivers we’ve straightened, we immediately aim to get straight to our goals, unconcerned with the means or particulars of the roads we travel.

As conscious beings we can pursue many different solutions to our problems other than the simply natural ones. But in order to do so we have had to distance ourselves from the compulsions of instincts. This has brought us a measure of freedom but it’s also created many disasters in that we’ve had to learn anew how to regulate ourselves as individuals and as nations consciously rather than naturally.

Some would seek the answers to our current social and individual problems in naturalism, becoming primitives again. Others would seek answers to our problems in short sighted engineering solutions like straightened rivers. I believe however, the solution is to observe the processes and rhythms found equally in nature externally and in our unconscious internally and to consciously channel these rhythms into infinitely creative and sustainable harmonies.

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