My work lies in a Jungian-alchemy-Christian context and reaches into areas that have no valid name as yet. I have spent many years studying and working with various Eastern exoteric and esoteric ways and I have personally become convinced that they, though revealing of much reality, contain certain short comings that they do not intrinsically contain the tools to overcome. That is my personal view which I mean to impose on no one nor do I wish here to debate the subject. I am only giving a brief description of my own position for clarification reasons.
My topic here is the question of how well Carl Jung is understood even to this day. Of course most of the basics of analytical psychology are grasped by countless people both professional and lay, but when one looks at the deeper layers of Jung's work the situation changes radically. In late life, Jung said that the only one of his published works that he would change nothing about was AN ANSWER TO JOB. I believe that AION is also a work that he was for the most part satisfied with though the work itself articulates burning, unanswered questions that led directly to his writing AN ANSWER TO JOB. The following quote from a letter written by Jung is directly related to the subject matter of the two works named above:
"Since a creation without the reflecting consciousness of man has no discernible meaning, the hypothesis of a latent meaning endows man with a cosmogonic significance, a true raison d'etre. If... the latent meaning is attributed to the Creator as part of a conscious plan of creation, the question arises: Why should the Creator stage-manage this whole phenomenal world since he already knows what he can reflect himself in, and why should he reflect himself at all since he is already conscious of himself? Why should he create alongside his own omniscience a second, inferior consciousness - millions of dreary little mirrors when he knows in advance just what the image they reflect will look like?
...He is just as unconscious as man or even more unconscious, since according to the myth of the incarnatio he actually felt obliged to become man and offer himself as a sacrifice."
First of all, I have no interest in discussing "the myth of the incarnatio" here, I am only interested in the fact that Jung believed from what he took as his own valid personal experience that the Divine reality, in all of its opposing aspects, is basically unconscious. It bears a quality which Jung termed "luminosity," but this is not the same thing as consciousness. The light and the dark, the masculine and the feminine, and any other opposing features of the Divine reality are UNCONSCIOUS. This does not mean they are "dead" features, it means rather that though they are living realities they do not know that they are living features. They show no appearance of self-reflection unless a certain extraordinary depth of self-reflection first develops in the consciousness of man. But this does not mean that man is self-sufficient. Man emerges from the Divine and must work with the Divine reality in order to survive and develop as a conscious reality. And this is by no means easy, without suffering, or without profound risks. "Meaning" itself depends on the work of human consciousness with Divine unconsciousness, but human consciousness is a relatively shallow and vulnerable reality that only the most devoted work can sustain and keep from submergence in the fathomless ocean of unconsciousness where "meaning" has no actual existence.
In this forum, I read a statement which asserted that a serious problem with Jungian psychology was its failure to address the question of how to properly align oneself with "Goodness" rather than "Evil" when working with the unification of opposites in archetypal reality. This statement referred to this "Evil" as a dangerous conscious force. The true Jungian position on this matter is that this Dark feature of Divine reality is indeed a dangerous force that must be dealt with properly, but it is not conscious and the term "Evil" is a meaning-term that has reality only in human consciousness. This does not suggest that this evil-in-consciousness is not a reality. It suggests rather how profoundly demanding of true understanding the realities that Jung's work revealed actually are. And I have encountered very few Jungian academics or analysts who even begin to have a real and working grasp of this.
I also read a comment which said that the problem with Job is that he has a wrong God-Image and that is why he suffers so grievously, suggesting that he need only change his Image of God and the problems will pass away. But Jung never said such a facile thing. Jung said that there must be a change in the God-Image, but this changed God-Image must consciously include the Dark side of Divinity. And then the real work of conscious integration in humanity begins. And Jung never said that consciously integrating the Feminine element into the God-Image would take the Darkness away from the Divinity. All of this is territory that few, whether Jungians or something else, have consciously entered. It challenges us with a profound reorientation concerning the meaning of conscious existence.
My own work has brought me to some transformational understanding of this and I am willing to share and discuss. But I ask you to refrain from comment if you only wish to tell me that the Eastern traditions have "transcended" all this or if you believe that this is merely a question of feminine integration. The Feminine element of Divinity also has a Shadow that very few commentators have addressed with a sufficient depth.
I am not interested in either a masculine or feminine perspective, I am interested in the work of deepening consciousness to a depth that includes and goes beyond both opposites by way of integration or even of a fusing that gives birth to actual transformation rather than what is called transcendence in the Eastern traditions.
My topic here is the question of how well Carl Jung is understood even to this day. Of course most of the basics of analytical psychology are grasped by countless people both professional and lay, but when one looks at the deeper layers of Jung's work the situation changes radically. In late life, Jung said that the only one of his published works that he would change nothing about was AN ANSWER TO JOB. I believe that AION is also a work that he was for the most part satisfied with though the work itself articulates burning, unanswered questions that led directly to his writing AN ANSWER TO JOB. The following quote from a letter written by Jung is directly related to the subject matter of the two works named above:
"Since a creation without the reflecting consciousness of man has no discernible meaning, the hypothesis of a latent meaning endows man with a cosmogonic significance, a true raison d'etre. If... the latent meaning is attributed to the Creator as part of a conscious plan of creation, the question arises: Why should the Creator stage-manage this whole phenomenal world since he already knows what he can reflect himself in, and why should he reflect himself at all since he is already conscious of himself? Why should he create alongside his own omniscience a second, inferior consciousness - millions of dreary little mirrors when he knows in advance just what the image they reflect will look like?
...He is just as unconscious as man or even more unconscious, since according to the myth of the incarnatio he actually felt obliged to become man and offer himself as a sacrifice."
First of all, I have no interest in discussing "the myth of the incarnatio" here, I am only interested in the fact that Jung believed from what he took as his own valid personal experience that the Divine reality, in all of its opposing aspects, is basically unconscious. It bears a quality which Jung termed "luminosity," but this is not the same thing as consciousness. The light and the dark, the masculine and the feminine, and any other opposing features of the Divine reality are UNCONSCIOUS. This does not mean they are "dead" features, it means rather that though they are living realities they do not know that they are living features. They show no appearance of self-reflection unless a certain extraordinary depth of self-reflection first develops in the consciousness of man. But this does not mean that man is self-sufficient. Man emerges from the Divine and must work with the Divine reality in order to survive and develop as a conscious reality. And this is by no means easy, without suffering, or without profound risks. "Meaning" itself depends on the work of human consciousness with Divine unconsciousness, but human consciousness is a relatively shallow and vulnerable reality that only the most devoted work can sustain and keep from submergence in the fathomless ocean of unconsciousness where "meaning" has no actual existence.
In this forum, I read a statement which asserted that a serious problem with Jungian psychology was its failure to address the question of how to properly align oneself with "Goodness" rather than "Evil" when working with the unification of opposites in archetypal reality. This statement referred to this "Evil" as a dangerous conscious force. The true Jungian position on this matter is that this Dark feature of Divine reality is indeed a dangerous force that must be dealt with properly, but it is not conscious and the term "Evil" is a meaning-term that has reality only in human consciousness. This does not suggest that this evil-in-consciousness is not a reality. It suggests rather how profoundly demanding of true understanding the realities that Jung's work revealed actually are. And I have encountered very few Jungian academics or analysts who even begin to have a real and working grasp of this.
I also read a comment which said that the problem with Job is that he has a wrong God-Image and that is why he suffers so grievously, suggesting that he need only change his Image of God and the problems will pass away. But Jung never said such a facile thing. Jung said that there must be a change in the God-Image, but this changed God-Image must consciously include the Dark side of Divinity. And then the real work of conscious integration in humanity begins. And Jung never said that consciously integrating the Feminine element into the God-Image would take the Darkness away from the Divinity. All of this is territory that few, whether Jungians or something else, have consciously entered. It challenges us with a profound reorientation concerning the meaning of conscious existence.
My own work has brought me to some transformational understanding of this and I am willing to share and discuss. But I ask you to refrain from comment if you only wish to tell me that the Eastern traditions have "transcended" all this or if you believe that this is merely a question of feminine integration. The Feminine element of Divinity also has a Shadow that very few commentators have addressed with a sufficient depth.
I am not interested in either a masculine or feminine perspective, I am interested in the work of deepening consciousness to a depth that includes and goes beyond both opposites by way of integration or even of a fusing that gives birth to actual transformation rather than what is called transcendence in the Eastern traditions.
