Carl Jung's Secret Life: "The "Aryan Christ" - something rotten in Jungian psychology?

"Race and Human Evolution" by Wolpoff and Caspari also gave the racial ideology background which helps to see how Hitler just naturally filled the role expected of someone like him.

Jordan Peterson and Stephen Hicks have touched upon this, but it does seem like ideologies have a life of their own, sort of like a representation of a thought center, and all they need are 'willing' participants to act as vehicles to act out those ideas in physical reality. Kind of like how bacteria make up a large portion of who we are and in many ways shape our behaviour, moods and emotions, and in the Work, parsing out what's real and 'I' as opposed to what constitutes programs or something else acting through us. It really brings home the point of what the C's said to Terry about the battle not being for us, but through us. We really have to be careful what we allow into our 'fields' of perception as well as what we choose to believe or don't believe and whether they constitute lies or the truth - both about ourselves and the world around us.
 
I think your summary nails it. For me it was kind of creepy to get an inside scoop to that Volkish ideological possession and I had the same feeling while reading "The Psychopathic God" (I'm not entirely finished yet with this book). I think it will be quite awhile before I can listen to Wagner again.

"Race and Human Evolution" by Wolpoff and Caspari also gave the racial ideology background which helps to see how Hitler just naturally filled the role expected of someone like him.

This is so true. I've finished the Jung book and am almost through Psychopathic God. As the author of PG said, the ground had been so thoroughly prepared by every avenue possible, it was inevitable that someone would step into the role of the messianic leader that had been expected for decades. Scary. And it makes one wonder what sort of leader is the ground being prepared for now? Maybe the libtards are so out of control, they are unconsciously broadcasting their desire for an authoritarian parent figure who will make everything right in their world?
 
And it makes one wonder what sort of leader is the ground being prepared for now? Maybe the libtards are so out of control, they are unconsciously broadcasting their desire for an authoritarian parent figure who will make everything right in their world?

"The Psychopathic God" also remarks how an economic collapse was the key to polarize the population even further, enhancing that desperate desire for an authoritarian parent figure who would set things right. We do live in interesting times!
 
And it makes one wonder what sort of leader is the ground being prepared for now?

Indeed! I don't even want to imagine the kind of leader that will be necessary if it gets to that point. Although, in a sense, it already exists: it's the nanny state and the whole setup...

Thank you Aeneas for that great analysis. The parallels are striking. IMO, it's all the more interesting and nefarious because nowadays it's not single individuals but entire groups who "play God" and consider themselves superior.
 
In finishing editing things to prepare the forum review for Sott, I stumbled on a few more bits that I hadn't connected before.

Curiously enough, then both Jung and Hitler had a loaded pistol next to their bed. Ok, it is different times now, but I still doubt that it was common back then.

Another things was that Martin Heidegger who Waite calls the most influential German philosopher in the 20th century, apart from only having scorn for democracy, hailed Hitler in 1933 as his fulfillment of his fondest dreams for Germany. According to Stephen Hicks, then Heidegger was unquestionably the leading 20th century philosopher for the postmodernists. The links to liberal fascism has some curious roots.
 
Thanks for connecting the dots Aeneas! It made me remember and look up a section of ‘Jung the Mystic’ that I had noted when reading it. Some thoughts below.

Jung the Mystic said:
Gross was a habitue of the decadent bohemian café society of Munich’s Schwabing district – a kind of early-twentieth-century Haight-Ashbury – and embraced the radical social ideas prevalent in Monte Verita, the “Mountain of Truth,” an early alternative community established in Ascona, Switzerland, in 1900, where as the historian Martin Green argued, “the counterculture began.” (15) Notables such as Herman Hesse, Rudolf Steiner, Isadora Duncan, and many more made the trek to Monte Verita to take the nature cure, practice nudity (not Steiner), meditate, grow their own vegetables, enjoy “free love,” and in general cast off the ills of an increasingly mechanized society. […]
Jung the Mystic said:
[…]On one occasion, as with his first conversation with Freud, Jung and Gross talked for twelve hours straight. Gross introduced Jung to the ideas he absorbed in Schwabing’s Cafes (16) and amidst the sun worshippers on Monte Verita, among them paganism and the notion of an ancient matriarchal society, that had been advocated by Johann Bachofen, like Jung a Baseler. […]

15 – ‘Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begans, Ascona 1900 – 1920’ by Martin Green and ‘Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen’ by the author of the Jung book – Gary Lachman

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0874513650/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

From an amazon review of Green’s book:

‘Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins. Ascona, 1900 – 1920’ _ (University Press of New England, 1986) by Martin Green is an interesting study and history of the counterculture that developed in and around the Swiss village of Ascona and the Monte Verita (or Mountain of Truth) located there in around 1900. This location served as a meeting ground for various disaffected European intellectuals who expressed unhappiness with the industrializing of modern Europe. In Ascona they built a Nature Cure Sanatorium and engaged in various spiritual practices, including art and dance. Some of the more famous individuals who visited there included D. H. Lawrence, C. G. Jung, Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka, Rudolf von Laban, Isadora Duncan, Paul Tillich, and Mary Wigman. These individuals and authors sought a new way of life apart from the cities influenced by anarchism, pacifism, feminism, psychoanalysis, and nature worship. In many ways this early version of the counterculture which developed in the 1920s proved to be a precursor to the hippies of a later era. Also, the author of this book maintains that such ideas surrounding Ascona influenced German Volkish philosophy which became embodied in National Socialism. This book proves an interesting study of these authors and various other eccentric individuals including Otto Gross, Gusto Graser, and Rudolf von Laban who are all discussed in this book. The individuals who lived in Ascona participated in an alternative community that embodied the ideals of the counterculture.

16 – the book mentioned in the note is ‘Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich’ by David Clay Large – from the amazon page

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039303836X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The capital of the Nazi movement was not Berlin but Munich, according to Hitler himself. In examining why, historian David Clay Large begins in Munich four decades before World War I and finds a proto-fascist cultural heritage that proved fertile soil later for Hitler's movement. An engrossing account of the time and place that launched Hitler on the road to power.
Munich was the birthplace of Nazism and became the chief cultural shrine of the Third Reich. In exploring the question of why Nazism flourished in the 'Athens of the Isar', David Clay Large has written a compelling account of the cultural roots of the Nazi movement, allowing us to see that the conventional explanations for the movement's rise are not enough. Large's account begins in Munich's 'golden age', four decades before World War I, when the city's artists and writers produced some of the outstanding work of the modernist spirit. He sees a dark side to the city, a protofascist cultural heritage that would tie Adolf Hitler's movement to its soul. Large prowls his volatile world of seamy basement meeting places, finding that attacks on modernity and liberalism flourished, along with virulent anti-Semitism and German nationalism. From the violent experience of the Munich Soviet, through Hitler's failed Beer-Hall Putsch of 1923 and on to his appointment as German chancellor in 1933, Large unfurls a narrative full of insight and implication.

So it sounds like the counter-culture ideas and practices in Ascona were mixed with a the 'protofascist heritage' in Munich in a strange brew that produced Hitler and the Nazis. Kind of like counter-culture hippies meet the KKK (or any other group or groups that says a racial group is the problem - such as that New Times editor that was recently hired and the focus on white people being the problem) in the US or something and spawn a movement after an economic collapse.

Thinking about where the next Hitler like person might come from and consider that focus might be on singling out and focusing on Muslims being the problem (“(L) Yeah, just like there was in Nazi Germany. Back then it was Jews, and now it's other Semites, i.e. Arabs and Muslims. They got rid of the Semitic Jews during the holocaust and most of what is left are the Khazarian Jews. Now, they are going after the Semitic Arabs.”) Session 21 November 2015), if it is in the US, it could be any number of places where Antifa has big followings, seems most any college campus in the US, sanctuary cities or liberal/counter-culture hotbed type places. Figure big money and ties to the US military-defense-industrial complex would be involved in some way and Silicon Valley seems to fit that nicely (I mean my god look at the type of mindset that place seems to be producing - How to "biohack your intelligence" — and graduate to 4D STS).

So if I was to guess I’d say look at what is happening in any underground or counter-cultural movements in California where it would seem to be someplace where counter-culture ideas are mixed with Muslim being the problem, yet with America first and make America great again type thinking. Throw in a person who is willing to be a tool of 4D STS with that mix and seems maybe you have the makings of the next Hitler. And like Hitler there could be any number of veterans of US wars that have gone counter-culture, but maintain nationalistic beliefs and ideas about the US, kind of like a counterculture influenced ‘liberal’ with a streak of John McCain. But maybe all this is too simplistic a line of thought.
 
Last edited:
The following is a draft article version of the previous review of the book about Jung: "The Aryan Christ":

Bookreview: Jung - The Aryan Christ - the times in which he lived and links to the present





Can we learn something from history or are we doomed repeat it? The movement that brought Hitler to power did not happen in a vacuum and neither did the postmodernists of today. Trying to understand this a little better, I was indirectly encouraged to read a few books about Carl Jung and Hitler. They are not people that are normally put together in the same sentence and yet despite their great differences, a lot can be learned from the cultural background that they as contemporary of one another both shared and which gave rise to them and their ideas. The first book was a book by Milton Mayer from 1955 'They thought they were free' where Mayer tries to understand what made ordinary Germans en masse go along with Hitler. This was followed by 'The Aryan Christ - The secret life of Carl Jung' by Richard Noll and lastly 'The psychopathic god, Adolf Hitler' by Robert Waite.

The following summarizes some of the points about Jung from reading these books and a few others. Points that shocked me, but helped to put certain things in perspective.

Jung was happy to use others for his own advancement. One example was his use of his young cousin Helly in order to get a doctoral dissertation, which according to what Noll writes, played a devastating part in the short life that Helly ended up having. (pp. 47-51). A number of the things that we attribute to Jung such as archetypes, were actually done by others, that Jung forgot to credit. One of those was Sabine Spielrein.

Jung showed one face in public, which was that of a professor of science and the wise old man, while in private he delved into many kinds of occult things, portraying himself as the initiate of ancient occult mysteries. I don't have a problem with him using the I-Ching, astrology, Ouija board or that he was interested in paranormal things in general, but he seemed to display a great naiveté and a lack of knowledge that made him totally open for dark forces. Sadly that naivité is still prevalent today in what cHe could have used his scientific background in looking at paranormal things, but he ended up believing anything that came through.

Jung was able to lure rich men and women into his orbit and this played a key role in securing himself financially and fund his movement. His wife, Emma Jung was at the time of their marriage in 1903, the second richest heiress in Switzerland, being the daughter of a rich Swiss industrialist. This also enabled his bohemian lifestyle, daydreaming and carefree living.

Jung wanted a cultural revitalization and as it says on (p.57) "He seems to have been attracted to psychoanalysis as an agent of cultural revitalization through its promotion of core Nietzschean themes of uncovering, the breaking of bonds, irrationality, and sexuality. He was not alone." Could we say world revolution, sexual revolution, 1968, postmodernism? One can see the seeds of the descent into chaos, disorder, anarchy etc. as witnessed today in the search for a new utopia.

Jung saw himself as the messiah, the Aryan Christ (pp.112, 142 and many other places). Jung (1875 - 1961)just like Hitler (1889 - 1945) were to a great deal a product of the time they lived in and the various movements and intellectual thoughts of the time (admittedly we all are). They both believed themselves to be the Aryan Christ. They both were moved greatly as young men by the opera 'Parsifal' by Richard Wagner and longed for the return to the old Aryan gods of Wotan and the völkisch pagan spirit. (pp 143-146) Noll writes:
All of the values that formed the foundation of the industrial order - repressive Judeo-Christian anti-hedonism, utilitarianism, and rational thought - were confronted with new philosophies of life or of pure experiences that exalted myth over history, impulsive action or deed over conscious reflection, and feeling or intuition over rational thought.
[...]
The iron cage of "civilization" - Judeo-Christian beliefs and other political and value systems - had to be cast off in order to recover true culture, the primordial ground of the soul, the Volk. There was only one solution: recover the "archaic man" within, allowing a rejuvenating return to the chthonic powers of the Edenic, Aryan past.(p.115).​
So there was at the time a religious crisis and it was considered normal in order to become 'modern', to question and even reject Christianity (p.125) and there was a search for ancient roots. Philosophical ideas, the theosophical society, books on occult mysteries, art and a host of various nationalists movements at the time inspired many people and it is in this context that both Hitler and Jung appear. Racialist thinking dominated the intellectual debate. Anti-Semitism was equally topical at the time and Jung and his movement took on on the nature of an Aryans-only cult of redemption and rebirth. (p.108, 114)

German Romanticism which disregarded reason in favour of feelings, the instinctive and a return to nature, influenced Jung as well as Hitler. Nudism, vegetarianism, paganism, anarchism, contact with the ancestors, hiking in nature, sun worshipping, are some of the movements that stemmed from that period and thrived in Germany towards the end of the 19th century. This was linked to the idea of spiritual purity of the Aryan blood and the Aryan race which was seen as having been polluted, thus the body centered approach to rectify it(p115-116). This was part of the Lebensreform social movement of "going back to nature". The artist Fidus (1868 - 1948) whose drawings are used in the book on Jung was in this movement. Most of the ideas that the German romanticists had, can be seen today and on the political cultural scale it is easy to see which movement embodies these, namely the progressive liberal movement.

Other inspirations at the time was the movement started by another Romanticist Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) a nationalist who founded German gymnastics societies and of which it says (Waite p 263).One of the first "völkisch Nationalists," he preached the concept of Volkstum - the mysterious racial force that shapes all history - and in 1813 he called for a national leader, "a great Führer, cast of Iron and Fire...The Volk will honor him as savior and forgive all his sins."This is just to show the Zeitgeist (spirit of the age) that influenced Jung as well as Hitler. Jung delved into the Germanic Aryan part of mysticism casting himself as the Aryan Christ, while Hitler drew from it that he was the long awaited for Führer who would be the savior first and foremost of Germany and the Aryan race and whose sins would be absolved.

Jung like Hitler were authoritarians and none of them could take criticism, both going into rages (p.187) and temper tantrums (perhaps as mentioned by Noll in regards to Jung due to a Freudian father-complex, something that Waite also asserts that Hitler suffered from). This also fits with SJW, who can't allow for any criticism and who also favours subjective feelings, emotions and instinct, over reason.

Jung went for polygamy after meeting Otto Gross, and in so doing opened Pandora 's Box, I think. It was his 'going for the pot of gold' moment and he went without looking and without knowing about the kinds of energies that it unleashed and the destructiveness of such energies both on himself aswell as others. In adopting for polygamy Jung changed a lot of his beliefs and started to see sex as sacred and polygamy as the path to unleash the ancient creative energies of the body and the unconscious mind (p. 87). Understanding the dopamine pathway and how it enslaves us to addictions might be a more accurate explanation. Despite being married and having 5 children, Jung was adamant not to give up on his polygamous lifestyle. He came to believe God was the libido and that not giving in to a strong sexual impulse could result in illness or even death and he urged his ideas on others.(p.87) One can see how these ideas very much are around to day. Jung's legacy can be seen in the pseudo-adage "Follow your bliss". Jung saw polygamy as the cure for many things and prescribed it to his male clients, an example of which was the prescribing of polygamy for Medill McCormich as a way to overcome his despair and the saving of his soul. Sleeping with clients, overstepping professional boundaries and trust ensued and needless to say, so did abuse. As has been seen so many times not least since his time, the path of polygamy goes towards the lower centers and not towards something higher and nobler.

Jonathan Haidt mentions in his book " The righteous Mind" about the six moral tastebuds. They are care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity and liberty. Jung had before meeting Otto Gross (in 1908) been a bourgeois conservative and perhaps more aligned with the full compliment of the 6 moral tastebuds. Gross was an anarchist and according to Noll, inspired Jung with utopian ideas of transforming the world through psychoanalysis (p.84). This changed Jung radically (p. 121) and with it his moral tastebuds. It appears that loyalty, sanctity and authority diminished from the list of tastebuds if they were ever really present. The same moral tastebuds are similarly absent if not low among social justice warriors (SJW) of the postmodernists today. Elevating himself to the level of God after his self-acclaimed initiation into the 'mysteries' in 1913 would perhaps have played a role in absolving himself from the hurt and misery that he caused to those around him.

Jung was at times paranoid as he "was suspicious of everyone, always thinking they had some ulterior motives." He kept a loaded pistol by his bed, so that he could kill himself if he ever felt that he had entirely lost his sanity (p.151). Interestingly, so was Hitler also paranoid and trusted no-one and thought everybody was out to get him. He too always kept a pistol by his side (Waite p.161) Perhaps that was partly due to their strong belief that they were right and their shared difficulty/inability to acknowledge the ideas of others. For Hitler's part, he also had a strong death wish.

Jung pulled in a lot of doctors and psychiatrists not to mention female patients, who became willing followers obeying the supremacy of Jung as their leader/guru and who was seen as key to their souls salvation and their own enlightenment. Again the similarity with Hitler is interesting as Hitler managed to pull in a lot of followers, the closets of whom became his generals/henchmen. They also saw Hitler as the heralded savior and followed him without questioning, perhaps due to believing in Hitler as the destined leader who would lead Germany to glory. The most influential German philosopher in the 20th century, Martin Heidegger, who also happens to be perhaps the father of postmodernism, hailed Hitler in May 1933 as the fulfillment of his fondest dream for Germany. (Waite p.324 and Stephen Hicks p. 69)

Jung spent a lot of time alone in his fantasies, daydreaming, talking to 'spirits', whom he thought of as being divine in origin. Hitler according to Waite also spent a lot of time by himself, engaged in fantasies, daydreaming and far removed from reality.

Jung was secretive and surrounded himself with an air of mystique. He talked about ancient mysteries cults that were in vogue at the time as if he was an most high initiate of these mysteries and that through him and the Jungian psychoanalytic method was it possible for others to enter the mysteries. Implied was it that Jung had the full banana and way beyond any of his followers. (pp.120 - 147).

Jung was racial in his view of spirituality as he saw it as distinct German and Aryan. This was particularly shown I think in his response to the arrival of the Greek-Armenian Gurdjieff and the Russian Ouspensky on the scene, where Jung argued for racial spirituality, claiming foreign teachings as being poison.
He [Jung] argued that Germans would find Jewish psychoanalysis unsatisfying. Analytical psychology is therefore an Aryan science and form of spiritual psychotherapy that can truly assist only those of Aryan blood. Whereas Jung considered the English an extension of Germanic blood, his tolerance did not extend to the Slavs such as Ouspensky. The English were Aryans, they could be redeemed with his methods. Slavs, although originally Aryan, had too much Asian blood mixed in; they would have a difficult time. Jews could not be redeemed. that spirituality must come from one's blood and that one should be aware of the sweet poison of foreign gods. (p.258-259)​
According to Noll, then Jung learned from the set-up around Freud (1856 - 1939), which was like a religious sect with Freud as its head, pulling the strings and with supreme loyalty to him. Everybody gave Freud intimate details about each other in the group which then Freud could use as leverage and control. That aspect sounds much like Scientology. Jung venerated initially Freud in a religious way and as a godlike figure and appears to have copied. As things developed AND with the help of Rockefeller money the idea to use psychoanalysis to bring a spiritual rebirth to the world blossomed. (p.225). Considering the pervasiveness of Jungianism in psychological thought and how its influences made its way via New Age movements, then one can say that they have been very successful.

In a sense one can argue that a Jung or a Hitler were special and that if so and so hadn't lived things in our world would have been different. Looking at all the people around Jung who readily served what became the psychoanalytic movement and the prevalent zeitgeist of those times, then it is likely that if it hadn't been for Jung, who was but a mediocre doctor, then someone else would have stood up. The same goes for Hitler.

Let me for a moment speculate and entertain the idea that we are not alone in the universe and that other 'invisible' forces pull the strings much like in the Cave story by Plato. Then such forces with a much longer time horizon and planning could nicely set up conditions over millenia to take over our heart and soul. Especially if such forces do not have our best interests at heart and can hide behind a curtain. The end result of such 'programming' could be one in which we freely give up our free will as long as we can indulge our hedonist lower centers a la 'follow your bliss'. We might even beg for laws to be imposed creating a surveillance police state, just to protect us, you know. In that scenario, one could then ask if they would not also have made sure to have spare 'Jungs' or 'Hitlers' etc, up their sleeve? Surely they were not the only ones, who could have had 'godly experiences' (if need be) to make them believe they were the long awaited return of Christ. And if they both had so many similarities, was it then what made them so open/vulnerable to be used as tools for an agenda with far greater scope than they could ever comprehend.

Again if one looks at it from a distance, then the movements started by Jung and Hitler close to a hundred years ago were at the onset so completely opposite to each other, yet both wanted to destroy the existing order to bring about each their version of a utopian paradise, both essentially material in nature. Today, some vocal offsprings of Jungian thought, the ideology of the postmodernists are exponents of leftists fascism supporting a Big brother society that stifles free speech and dissenting voices, while claiming the holy highground of protecting the planet, the biodiversity, the animals, the climate and of course freedom and democracy. One can perhaps say that the herding of the sheep which started a long time ago from different directions now is reaching a common climax. Let us hope that Hitler's Third Reich was not a practice run, though the programming on the masses which Goebbels would have envied appears close to complete.

Lastly a disclaimer.Even if I found quite a number of similarities between Hitler and Jung then I am not saying that Jung was a Hitler or that psychoanalysis is nazism. The similarities were just interesting, having read the two books in succession which to me highlighted the influences at the time under a Germanic cultural background.

I also think it is important to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I find that a number of Jungian concepts have validity as a framework of understanding things and one can even say that many of them are not even Jungian. He just got the credit for them, but some were worked out by his collaborators at the time or later and he also got ideas from the works of other authors, whom he didn't necessarily give credit.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana​
References:
The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung by Richard Noll
The Psychopathic God: Adolph Hitler by Robert G. L. Waite
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen R. C.Hicks
 
It's great but needs a grammar and syntax maven to go over it!
 
Somewhere in the forum I've read the first 3 paragraphs of the quote below, though I can't find it now. I thought the 4th paragraph was even more noteworthy, in the words of Colin Wilson, about making and breaking habits and the force of will.
The most significant event of his early life occurred when he was twelve. In the cathedral square, a boy shoved him so violently that he fell and struck his head on the pavement, becoming momentarily unconscious. He lay there longer than necessary to worry his assailant, and the thought flashed through his head ‘Now I shan’t have to go to school any more.’ People picked him up and took him to a house nearby where two aunts lived. The accident reinforced his self-pity. He began having fainting spells, and was allowed to stay away from school for six months. His parents worried and consulted doctors; the boy was sent off to relatives in Winterthur, where he intensely enjoyed hanging around the railway station. It was suggested that he was suffering from epilepsy.

Back home again, he was hiding behind a shrub in the garden one day when he heard a visitor ask after his health; his father replied: ‘It’s a sad business ... they think it may be epilepsy. It would be dreadful if it were incurable. I have lost what little I had, and what will become of the boy if he cannot earn his own living?’

The words deeply disturbed Jung: pity for his father, self-pity, fear of poverty, all mingled together. He had wasted six months. He hurried off to his father’s study, took out his Latin grammar, and began to work. After a short time he had a fainting fit and fell off the chair. He refused to stop working. Soon another attack came; he refused to give up and went on studying. After an hour, he experienced a third fainting fit. Still he pressed on grimly. Then, suddenly, he felt better than he had felt since the attacks began. And then they suddenly ceased. Jung was able to go back to school.

In recounting this episode in his autobiography he merely comments, ‘I had learned what neurosis is.’ But there was far more to it than that. What Jung had done, with the aid of the bang on the head, was to induce a more or less instantaneous habit. It was, in effect, a form of self-hypnosis. Just as we can induce in ourselves a prickling of the scalp when we listen to a favourite piece of music, Jung had learned to induce fainting spells when faced with stress. He had enlisted the aid of the ‘robot’ that lives in the depths of the mind to help him evade the boredom and misery of school. He had chosen the route of illness and escape—the route chosen by so many of the nineteenth-century romantics. Overhearing his father’s anxious comments recalled him to a sense of responsibility. What he then did was to deliberately outface and overcome the habit. He was saying, in effect: ‘I caused it; I can get rid of it.’ So at the age of twelve, Jung had not merely grasped the basic mechanism of neurosis: he had recognized that it can be cured by an act of will. This could well have been the most important experience of his life; it was certainly a turning point.
Lord of the Underworld, pages 18-19.
 
I think everyone should re-read this. Sounds like it's time we all gave up any ideas of 'doing' or 'achieving' anything from a 'spiritual' perspective and just 'go with the flow'. The reason I say is because the 2nd last comment by the Cs below is, IMO, pretty close to the truth of the situation.

Seems to me that, incarnated as 3D humans, we are here "to be used" in the grand scheme of things, by one 'side' or the other, as vehicles for one kind of 'energy' or another. Our relative lack of awareness means we don't play much of a conscious part in the proceedings, but as the Cs say, are kind of 'directed' by 'others': either our 'higher selves' or other forces at work in this drama.

Remaining isolated as individuals, we are easy prey for the machinations of those 'other' forces, but united into a group, we stand a better chance of resisting those machinations because we pool the little awareness/knowledge we do have. This would be especially true if, as suggested, we are in some way part of a larger 'soul group' and by uniting in this way we embody and grow closer to that more objective and 'higher' reality. This idea is even reflected at a material level with the well-known, and very practical phrase "united we stand divided we fall", although the caveat seems to be what a group unites around, because there are plenty of examples of a united group 'falling'.
 
Seems to me that, incarnated as 3D humans, we are here "to be used" in the grand scheme of things, by one 'side' or the other, as vehicles for one kind of 'energy' or another. Our relative lack of awareness means we don't play much of a conscious part in the proceedings, but as the Cs say, are kind of 'directed' by 'others': either our 'higher selves' or other forces at work in this drama.

Remaining isolated as individuals, we are easy prey for the machinations of those 'other' forces, but united into a group, we stand a better chance of resisting those machinations because we pool the little awareness/knowledge we do have. This would be especially true if, as suggested, we are in some way part of a larger 'soul group' and by uniting in this way we embody and grow closer to that more objective and 'higher' reality. This idea is even reflected at a material level with the well-known, and very practical phrase "united we stand divided we fall", although the caveat seems to be what a group unites around, because there are plenty of examples of a united group 'falling'.

So, it goes back to the Gurdjieffian/Sufi idea of falling under, or coming under, the influence of one aspect/name of God, or another? But, which one we embody or exemplify isn’t a done deal - because ‘they’ are all vying to use us?

What I mean is, if it was a done deal, if whatever is using me is a benevolent name, then I really wouldn’t have to worry about my choices, because my higher power has everything in hand. But that isn’t the case?

The malevolent names would prefer it if we were their 3D projection, instead. And so, they attempt to influence us to make decisions that align us with them. And they’re better enabled to do that if we are isolated, because we don’t or can’t network about our choices; whereas, if we work together, they have less chance of taking the reigns?

I guess I’m just trying to find a solid peg to hang free will on in all this.
 
So, it goes back to the Gurdjieffian/Sufi idea of falling under, or coming under, the influence of one aspect/name of God, or another? But, which one we embody or exemplify isn’t a done deal - because ‘they’ are all vying to use us?

What I mean is, if it was a done deal, if whatever is using me is a benevolent name, then I really wouldn’t have to worry about my choices, because my higher power has everything in hand. But that isn’t the case?

The malevolent names would prefer it if we were their 3D projection, instead. And so, they attempt to influence us to make decisions that align us with them. And they’re better enabled to do that if we are isolated, because we don’t or can’t network about our choices; whereas, if we work together, they have less chance of taking the reigns?

I guess I’m just trying to find a solid peg to hang free will on in all this.

This is one of those "both/and" situations in my view that can't be easily pinned down. Perhaps we can put it like this: We need to simply learn not to stay in the way of our destiny, of the flow of our life and learning curve as those intelligences higher than us (us in the future?) lay them out. Our free will in a sense is choosing that destiny by doing our best not to stand in the way. Networking is crucial for that, because otherwise, our misguided ideas and thoughts can easily lead us to stand in the way big time. I would add that patience and compassion are also key ingredients to "get out of the way".

The Cs have said again and again that we can't and shouldn't force things, "wait and see", everything in due time, and so on. By staying aware, learning, and networking, we can take appropriate decisions as we are supposed to, find the things we are supposed to find, experience what we are supposed to experience (our lessons determine our experience, and vice-versa), and generally ride along just as we are supposed to. OSIT
 
So, it goes back to the Gurdjieffian/Sufi idea of falling under, or coming under, the influence of one aspect/name of God, or another? But, which one we embody or exemplify isn’t a done deal - because ‘they’ are all vying to use us?

What I mean is, if it was a done deal, if whatever is using me is a benevolent name, then I really wouldn’t have to worry about my choices, because my higher power has everything in hand. But that isn’t the case?

The malevolent names would prefer it if we were their 3D projection, instead. And so, they attempt to influence us to make decisions that align us with them. And they’re better enabled to do that if we are isolated, because we don’t or can’t network about our choices; whereas, if we work together, they have less chance of taking the reigns?

I guess I’m just trying to find a solid peg to hang free will on in all this.

Well, there is always choice, every moment, over which "name" we align with. We know which is which, and we choose. Often, there is deception, and we get deceived by what we think is a 'benevolent name' when it's actually the opposite. But we learn, hopefully. But as you see, the range of our 'free will' is pretty limited. It's ultimately this, or that, and figuring out which is which, and then choosing.
 
I guess I’m just trying to find a solid peg to hang free will on in all this.
I recently finished The Mind and The Brain by Jeffrey M Schwartz, and I think in that book I found the most apt description of the peg you're looking for.

A tiny bit of context, a group of researchers were looking for a measurable form of something that would indicate the presence of will, they noted that there was a measurable current in the brain that was denominated the readiness potential, something that fired up right before an action.

So, the experiment was to measure when did the consciousness of a decision to perform an act occurred, the Will hypothesis hoped to find that consciousness appeared prior to this readiness potential, but what they found is that it appeared AFTER the measurable electrical signals were observed, microseconds after, but after.

So, the author establishes the idea of "Free Won't", that is, not so much to convince ourselves of the authorship of our choices, but of our capacity to say no to certain initiatives, and thus have a say in which initiatives get a green light or a yes.

In that sense, what JBP says about ideas possessing a person, or the notion of the names of God, and of aligning ourselves with one group of another, takes on a different connotation that I think allows for both concepts to coexist. We choose our alignment by choosing which ideas, or names of God, we say no to, when it comes to their expression in our lives.

And it isn't really foreign or incompatible with any of the concepts of the work, if anything it grounds the conversation. But also, we have a lot of examples on our daily lives, dietary choices is one good example. We're hit with the idea of choosing to eat one thing or the other, but we say no to it, because knowledge informs the gatekeeper in our minds, we made a choice even if the initial idea didn't originate in us.

We align ourselves with the eating healthy god, but most importantly and occurring at the same time, we're aligning ourselves away from the junk eating god... if that makes sense.

And that is the humble peg I have found. And I think there's several stories depicting this principle, sort of.. It's as if the will of mortals was expressed in their capacity to deny the will of the gods, but not by pretending to rise to their level, or deny their power, but by exercising sovereign denial. And not to simply rebel by default either, but because that is how one truly grows, a necessary sin.

I hope the above made sense.

edit: Pressed send too soon.
 
Back
Top Bottom