The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand and of the suggestive power of primordial images on the other . . . But when we turn to . . . the influence of the collective unconscious, we find we are moving in a dark interior world that is vastly more difficult to understand than the psychology of the persona, which is accessible to everyone . . . It is another thing to describe . . . those subtle inner processes which invade the conscious mind with such suggestive force. Perhaps we can best portray these influences with the help of examples of mental illness, creative inspiration, and religious conversion.
In a previous passage (1971:118) Jung points out that individuation is not identification with the collective unconscious, for this leads to a naive megalomania "in the form of prophetic inspiration and desire for martyrdom." Considering all this, it is not surprising that the path of the mystic has been called "the razor's edge."
Wherever in the world of man or nature one finds insulation, it is there for a reason. No less necessary is the insulation which separates the conscious mind from the generalized preconscious, for if it were not there, the ego would be overwhelmed and driven to madness by the superordinate and chaotic aspect of the numinous element. For the conscious mind is a finite tool, encased in space and time, and it can make sense of only a small amount of the universe at a given time. This situation again suggests that care should be taken in so important an undertaking and that efforts to contact the numinous element should proceed from pure motives, lofty ideals, and a firm resolution never to bring harm to others or to nature as a result of our actions.
The integrity of the ego is preserved by a rather narrowly defined channel in the volume of perceptual intake. It is this well-defined band that actually sustains the ego. Take it away and we lose consciousness (as in sleep or other altered states); increase it with perceptual overload or percepts which cannot be cognitively assimilated syntaxically and we have the trauma usually induced by a numinous experience. The so-called continuity of the ego is not independent but is the resultant of a carefully balanced perceptual intake. --J.C. Gowan
http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/issue/view/79
Reginald Machell " The Path" 1895
"(...) Our lives do not progress in a straight line, but they are delayed, they swing, they go back, renew themselves, they repeat." - J. Hillman from: The Soul Code, p. 181
"Jung calls the individual who identifies himself with his persona a mana personality; we would call him a stuffed shirt. That’s a person who is nothing but the role he or she plays. A person of this sort never lets his actual character develop. He remains simply a mask, and as his powers fail—as he makes mistakes and so forth—he becomes more and more frightened of himself, puts more and more of an effort into keeping up the mask. Then the separation between the persona and the self takes place, forcing the shadow to retreat further and further into the abyss.
You are to assimilate the shadow, embrace it. You don’t have to act on it, necessarily, but you must know it and accept it. You are not to assimilate the anima/animus—that’s a different challenge. You are to relate to it through the other. The only way one can become a human being is through relationships to other human beings.” – Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss
“To become—in Jung’s terms—individuated, to live as a released individual, one has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one’s various life roles. ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do,’ and when at home, do not keep on the mask of the role you play in the Senate chamber. But this, finally, is not easy, since some of the masks cut deep. They include judgment and moral values. They include one’s pride, ambition, and achievement. They include one’s infatuations. It is a common thing to be overly impressed by and attached to masks, either some mask of one’s own or the mana-masks of others. The work of individuation, however, demands that one should not be compulsively affected in this way. The aim of individuation requires that one should find and then learn to live out of one’s own center, in control of one’s for and against. And this cannot be achieved by enacting and responding to any general masquerade of fixed roles.” ~Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By
"Jung has said that to be in a situation where there is no way out, or to be in a conflict where there is no solution, is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution: the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego-consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realise that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong.
This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. Naturally, if a man says, "Oh well, then I shall just let everything go and make no decision, but just protract and wriggle out of [it]," the whole thing is equally wrong, for then naturally nothing happens.
But if he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. In psychological language the situation without issue, which the anima arranges with great skill in a man's life, is meant to drive him into a condition in which he is capable of experiencing the Self.
When thinking of the anima as the soul guide, we are apt to think of Beatrice leading Dante up to Paradise, but we should not forget that he experienced that only after he had gone through Hell. Normally, the anima does not take a man by the hand and lead him right up to Paradise; she puts him first into a hot cauldron where he is nicely roasted for a while." ~von Franz
Jung felt that the task of individuation involved resisting collective forces and developing a critical response to them. Any collective movement which identifies with an archetypal process is, virtually by definition, not going to accord with Jungian taste, which is based on the ethics and aesthetics of individuation. Jung's attack on what he called "identification with the collective psyche" is conveniently and deliberately ignored by all those New Age therapists, consultants, advocates, and shamans who like to freely celebrate and even "worship" the contemporary version of constellated archetypal contents.
If the New Age appears Jungian it is not because it has used Jung, but because it draws its life from and incessantly parades a particularly strong archetypal current that maps this psycho-spiritual territory. The same subjective evaluations and claims have been made for esoterics such as astrology, depth psychology, and for the Standard Model in physics. People claim they use them because "they work." Archetypal correlations, a heightened level of communication between unconscious and conscious coordination, are radically participatory in nature, shaped by relevant circumstantial factors and human response. (Tacey)http://www.planetdeb.net/spirit/contrast.htm
The first step in individuation is tragic guilt. The accumulation of guilt demands expiation ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 1094.
"But in the case of a real settlement it is not a question of interpretation: it is a question of releasing unconscious processes and letting them come into the conscious mind in the form of fantasies. We can try our hand at interpreting these fantasies if we like.
In many cases it may be quite important for the patient to have some idea of the meaning of the fantasies produced. But it is of vital importance that he should experience them to the full and, in so far as intellectual understanding belongs to the totality of experience, also understand them. Yet I would not give priority to understanding.
Naturally the doctor must be able to assist the patient in his understanding, but, since he will not and indeed cannot understand everything, the doctor should assiduously guard against clever feats of interpretation. The transcendent function does not proceed without aim and purpose, but leads to the revelation of the essential man.
It is in the first place a purely natural process, which may in some cases pursue its course without the knowledge or assistance of the individual, and can sometimes forcibly accomplish itself in the face of opposition.
The meaning and purpose of the process is the realization, in all its aspects, of the personality originally hid- den away in the embryonic germplasm; the production and unfolding of the original, potential wholeness.
The symbols used by the unconscious to this end are the same as those which mankind has always used to express wholeness, completeness, and perfection: symbols, as a rule, of the quaternity and the circle.
For these reasons I have termed this the individuation process. This natural process of individuation served me both as a model and guiding principle for my method of treatment.
--Carl Jung, CW 7, Paras 186-187
Individuation means becoming an “individual,” and, in so far as “individuality” embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self.
We could therefore translate individuation as “coming to selfhood” or “self-realization.”
--Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 266
The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand, and of the suggestive power of primordial images on the other.
--Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 269
"Human beings have one faculty which, though it is of the greatest utility for collective purposes, is most pernicious for individuation, and that is the faculty of imitation. Collective psychology cannot dispense with imitation, for without it all mass organizations, the State and the social order, are impossible. Society is organized, indeed, less by law than by the propensity to imitation, implying equally suggestibility, suggestion, and mental contagion.
But we see every day how people use, or rather abuse, the mechanism of imitation for the purpose of personal differentiation: they are content to ape some eminent personality, some striking characteristic or mode of behavior, thereby achieving an outward distinction from the circle in which they move.
We could almost say that as a punishment for this the uniformity of their minds with those of their neighbors, already real enough, is intensified into an unconscious, compulsive bondage to the environment.
As a rule these specious attempts at individual differentiation stiffen into a pose, and the imitator remains at the same level as he always was, only several degrees more sterile than before. To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.
--Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 242.
"In the individuation process, it anticipates the figure that comes from the synthesis of conscious and unconscious elements in the personality. It is therefore a symbol which unites the opposites; a mediator, bringer of healing, that is, one who makes whole. Because it has this meaning, the child motif is capable of the numerous transformations mentioned above: it can be expressed by roundness, the circle or sphere, or else by the quaternity as another form of wholeness. I have called this wholeness that transcends consciousness the “self.” The goal of the individuation process is the synthesis of the self." --Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 278
"The goal of individuation is not narcissistic self-absorption, as some might believe, but rather the manifestation of the larger purposes of nature through the incarnation of the individual. Each person, however insignificant in geopolitical terms, is the carrier of some small part of the telos of nature, the origin of which is shrouded in mystery but whose goal is conceivably dependent upon the enlargement of consciousness. If that be true, and I believe it is, then the task of individuation is wholeness, not goodness, not purity, not happiness. And wholeness includes the descent which the psyche frequently imposes upon the unwilling ego. "
– James Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul, Introduction.
For the alchemists the process of individuation represented by the opus was an analogy of the creation of the world, and the opus itself an analogy of God’s work of creation. --Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 550
This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process. As the name shows, it is a process or course of development arising out of the conflict between the two fundamental psychic facts. Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 522-523
Animals generally signify the instinctive forces of the unconscious, which are brought into unity within the mandala. This integration of the instincts is a prerequisite for individuation.
--Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 660
If the individuation process is made conscious, consciousness must confront the unconscious and a balance between the opposites must be found. As this is not possible through logic, one is dependent on symbols which make the irrational union of opposites possible. They are produced spontaneously by the unconscious and are amplified by the conscious mind.
The central symbols of this process describe the self, which is man’s totality, consisting on the one hand of that which is conscious to him, and on the other hand of the contents of the unconscious. --Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 755
Individuation appears, on the one hand, as the synthesis of a new unity which previously consisted of scattered particles, and on the other hand, as the revelation of something which existed before the ego and is in fact its father or creator and also its totality.
--Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 400
"Individuation is an expression of that biological process—simple or complicated as the case may be —by which every living thing becomes what it was destined to become from the beginning. This process naturally expresses itself in man as much psychically as somatically. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 460 The goal of psychological, as of biological, development is self-realization, or individuation. But since man knows himself only as an ego, and the self, as a totality, is indescribable and indistinguishable from a God image, self-realization—to put it in religious or metaphysical terms —amounts to God’s incarnation. That is already expressed in the fact that Christ is the son of God." --Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 233
The metaphysical process is known to the psychology of the unconscious as the individuation process. In so far as this process, as a rule, runs its course unconsciously as it has from time immemorial, it means no more than the acorn becomes an oak, the calf a cow, and the child an adult. But if the individuation process is made conscious, consciousness must confront the unconscious and a balance between the opposites must be found. As this is not possible through logic, one is dependent on symbols which make the irrational union of opposites possible. They are produced spontaneously by the unconscious and are amplified by the conscious mind.
--Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 755
"The difference between the “natural” individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light which shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it." --Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 756
Your heights are your own mountain, which belongs to you and you alone. There you are individual and live your very own life. If you live your own life, you do not live the common life, which is always continuing and never-ending, the life of history and the inalienable and ever-present burdens and products of the human race. There you live the endlessness of being, but not the becoming. Becoming belongs to the heights and is full of torment.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 267.
At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow beings. You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as you live the life of your fellow beings and descend to their lowliness you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among fish, a frog among frogs.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 266.
Incidentally-mustn't it be a peculiarly beautiful feeling to hit bottom in reality at least once, where there is no going down any further, but only upward beckons at best? Where for once one stands before the whole height of reality? ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 265.
"The goal of psychological, as of biological, development is self-realization, or individuation. But since man knows himself only as an ego, and the self, as a totality, is indescribable and indistinguishable from a God-image, self-realization-to put it in religious or metaphysical terms-amounts to God’s incarnation.
"That is already expressed in the fact that Christ is the son of God. And because individuation is an heroic and often tragic task, the most difficult of all, it involves suffering, a passion of the ego: the ordinary, empirical man we once were is burdened with the fate of losing himself in a greater dimension and being robbed of his fancied freedom of will. He suffers, so to speak, from the violence done to him by the self.
"The analogous passion of Christ signifies God’s suffering on account of the injustice of the world and the darkness of man. The human and the divine suffering set up a relationship of complementarity with compensating effects. Through the Christ-symbol, man can get to know the real meaning of his suffering: he is on the way towards realizing his wholeness.
"As a result of the integration of conscious and unconscious, his ego enters the “divine” realm, where it participates in “God’s suffering.” The cause of the suffering is in both cases the same, namely “incarnation,” which on the human level appears as “individuation.”
"The divine hero born of man is already threatened with murder, he has nowhere to lay his head, and his death is a gruesome tragedy. The self is no mere concept or logical postulate; it is a psychic reality, only part of it is conscious, while for the rest it embraces the life of the unconscious and is therefore inconceivable except in the form of symbols.
The drama of the archetypal life of Christ describes in symbolic images the events in the conscious-life-as well as the life that transcends consciousness-of a man who has been transformed by his higher destiny." ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion,
A Psychological Approach to the Trinity, Paragraph 233.
"In the center is the individual where the opposites are united, the one peaceful spot in man, the space where nothing moves embedded in a world of chaos. The task is now to bring about order, the alchemistic process must begin, namely, the production of the valuable substance, the transformation into the light. You see this mandala does not represent a normal condition of the collective unconscious; this is a turmoil caused by the appearance of the disturbing element in the center. For we may assume that the collective unconscious is in absolute peace until the individual appears.
Therefore individuation is a sin; it is an assertion of one particle against the gods, and when that happens even the world of the gods is upset, then there is turmoil. But in that abstraction, or that union-the coming together of the pair of opposites-there is absolute peace. Otherwise there is only the peace of God in a world in which there is no individual, in other words, no consciousness. Yes, perhaps it exists to metaphysical consciousness, but not to any mortal consciousness because there is none. You see, this chaos is due to the appearance of that center, but that is a center of peace because the pairs of opposites are united.
As it is said in the prophesies of lsaiah, the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb. Or that very impressive symbolism that the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, or put its hand into the cockatrice’s den." -- Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 263
It is also a plausible hypothesis that the archetype is produced by the original life urge and then gradually grows up into consciousness-with the qualification, however, that the innermost essence of the archetype can never become wholly conscious, since it is beyond the power of imagination and language to grasp and express its deepest nature. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 313.
Kundalini, Morris Graves
"to love is to create in beauty, both in the body and in the soul", says Plato. But when the soul, the psyche is separated from Eros, it is transformed into the inhibition of walls around her, in the reflection thought that as excess of thought is only mental. It is the reflection that does not need the other to feed, which is self-sufficient, self-sufficient, Autocreative, and which may also become, or claim to become, the ideal of 'know yourself'. [...] you know yourself. For Hillman, it can only value if it is meant to be true to its daimon ".
The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire
"to love is to create in beauty, both in the body and in the soul", says Plato. But when the soul, the psyche is separated from Eros, it is transformed into the inhibition of walls around her, in the reflection thought that as excess of thought is only mental. It is the reflection that does not need the other to feed, which is self-sufficient, self-sufficient, Autocreative, and which may also become, or claim to become, the ideal of 'know yourself'. [...] you know yourself. For Hillman, it can only value if it is meant to be true to its daimon ".
The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire
The process of Individuation is not “Mysticism,” “Shamanism,” “Alchemy,” or “Gnosticism”. It is an expression of the psychobiological process by which every living thing becomes
what it was destined to become from the beginning.
"The dead who besiege us are souls who have not fulfilled the principium individuation is, or else they would have become distant stars. Insofar as we do not fulfill it, the dead have a claim on us and besiege us and we cannot escape them." --Carl Jung; The Red Book; Appendix C; Page 370
what it was destined to become from the beginning.
"The dead who besiege us are souls who have not fulfilled the principium individuation is, or else they would have become distant stars. Insofar as we do not fulfill it, the dead have a claim on us and besiege us and we cannot escape them." --Carl Jung; The Red Book; Appendix C; Page 370
“In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, as far as possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience.” --Niels Bohr
"It would be most satisfactory of all if psyche and physis could be seen
as complementary aspects of the same reality." --Wolfgang Pauli
“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” ― Meister Eckhart
Projection
You see, our whole mental life, our consciousness, began with projections. Our mind under primitive conditions was entirely projected, and it is interesting that those internal contents, which made the foundation of real consciousness, were projected the farthest into space into the stars. So the first science was astrology. That was an attempt of man to establish a line of communication between the remotest objects and himself. Then he slowly fetched back all those projections out of space into himself.
Primitive man-wei!, even up to modern times lives in a world of animated objects. Therefore that term of Tylor’s, animism, which is simply the state of projection where man experiences his psychical contents as parts of the objects of the world. Stones, trees, human beings, families are all alive along with my own psyche and therefore I have a participation mystique with them. I influence them and I am influenced by them in a magical way, which is only possible because there is that bond of sameness. What appears in the animal say, is identical with myself because it is myself-it is a projection.
So our psychology has really been a sort of coming together, a confluence of projections.
The old gods, for instance, were very clearly psychical functions, or events, or certain emotions; some are thoughts and some are definite emotions. A wrathful god is your own wrathfulness. A goddess like Venus or Aphrodite is very much your own sexuality, but projected. Now, inasmuch as these figures have been deflated, inasmuch as they do not exist any longer, you gradually become conscious of having those qualities or concepts; you speak of your sexuality. That was no concept in the early centuries, but was the god, Aphrodite or Cupid or Kama or whatever name it was called by.
Then slowly we sucked in those projections and that accumulation made up psychological consciousness. Now, inasmuch as our world is still animated to a certain extent, or inasmuch as we are still in participation mystique, our contents are still projected; we have not yet gathered them in.
The future of mankind will probably be that we shall have gathered in all our projections, though I don’t know whether that is possible. It is more probable that a fair amount of projections will still go on and that they will still be perfectly unconscious to ourselves. But we have not made them; they are a part of our condition, part of the original world in which we were born, and it is only our moral and intellectual progress that makes us
aware of them.
So the projection in a neurosis is merely one case among many; one would hardly call it abnormal even, but it is more visible-too obvious. Nowadays, one might assume that a person would be conscious of his sexuality and not think that all other people were abnormal perverts; because one is unconscious of it, one thinks that other people are therefore wrong. Of course that is an abnormal condition, and to any normal, balanced individual, it seems absurd.
It is an exaggeration, but we are always inclined to function like that to a certain extent; again and again it happens that something is impressive and obvious in another individual which has not been impressive at all in ourselves. The thought that we might be like that never comes anywhere near us, but we emphatically insist upon that other fellow having such-and-such a peculiarity. Whenever this happens we should always ask ourselves: Now have I that peculiarity perhaps because I make such a fuss about it? ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1496-1497
"It would be most satisfactory of all if psyche and physis could be seen
as complementary aspects of the same reality." --Wolfgang Pauli
“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” ― Meister Eckhart
Projection
You see, our whole mental life, our consciousness, began with projections. Our mind under primitive conditions was entirely projected, and it is interesting that those internal contents, which made the foundation of real consciousness, were projected the farthest into space into the stars. So the first science was astrology. That was an attempt of man to establish a line of communication between the remotest objects and himself. Then he slowly fetched back all those projections out of space into himself.
Primitive man-wei!, even up to modern times lives in a world of animated objects. Therefore that term of Tylor’s, animism, which is simply the state of projection where man experiences his psychical contents as parts of the objects of the world. Stones, trees, human beings, families are all alive along with my own psyche and therefore I have a participation mystique with them. I influence them and I am influenced by them in a magical way, which is only possible because there is that bond of sameness. What appears in the animal say, is identical with myself because it is myself-it is a projection.
So our psychology has really been a sort of coming together, a confluence of projections.
The old gods, for instance, were very clearly psychical functions, or events, or certain emotions; some are thoughts and some are definite emotions. A wrathful god is your own wrathfulness. A goddess like Venus or Aphrodite is very much your own sexuality, but projected. Now, inasmuch as these figures have been deflated, inasmuch as they do not exist any longer, you gradually become conscious of having those qualities or concepts; you speak of your sexuality. That was no concept in the early centuries, but was the god, Aphrodite or Cupid or Kama or whatever name it was called by.
Then slowly we sucked in those projections and that accumulation made up psychological consciousness. Now, inasmuch as our world is still animated to a certain extent, or inasmuch as we are still in participation mystique, our contents are still projected; we have not yet gathered them in.
The future of mankind will probably be that we shall have gathered in all our projections, though I don’t know whether that is possible. It is more probable that a fair amount of projections will still go on and that they will still be perfectly unconscious to ourselves. But we have not made them; they are a part of our condition, part of the original world in which we were born, and it is only our moral and intellectual progress that makes us
aware of them.
So the projection in a neurosis is merely one case among many; one would hardly call it abnormal even, but it is more visible-too obvious. Nowadays, one might assume that a person would be conscious of his sexuality and not think that all other people were abnormal perverts; because one is unconscious of it, one thinks that other people are therefore wrong. Of course that is an abnormal condition, and to any normal, balanced individual, it seems absurd.
It is an exaggeration, but we are always inclined to function like that to a certain extent; again and again it happens that something is impressive and obvious in another individual which has not been impressive at all in ourselves. The thought that we might be like that never comes anywhere near us, but we emphatically insist upon that other fellow having such-and-such a peculiarity. Whenever this happens we should always ask ourselves: Now have I that peculiarity perhaps because I make such a fuss about it? ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1496-1497
What is this invisible ground whose image we carry in our souls where spiritual ideals merge with worldly realities? Isn’t it always right here, right now everywhere always forever? We embody all the laws and principles of the universe.
The contextual background, the invisible environment, is the fundamental ground from which both mind and matter emerge, the luminous absolute space of reality beyond the mere absence of energy/matter. Is our worldview rooted in the ground or groundless speculation? Our cosmology is our map of the soul and the symbolic structure of meaning.
Earth, Humanity, Heavens
Inner and outer Cosmos presents the image of a myriad of perspectives, multiple centers and vortices within a connecting principle. Kaleidoscopic images are an endless cascade of repeating detail. Iteration represents the complicated behavior of simple functions, rational or irrational.
Human achievement is a group effort as no individual has the knowledge or competence to reproduce what society has accomplished. Full lives are lived somewhere between trauma and transcendence on the uncertain road of life. The transformative process continually folds in on itself, stretching and kneading psychic space, bringing in that which is needed, and disposing of irrelevant informational content. Forgetting is useful.
Neuroscientists suggest that forgetfulness is how the brain prioritizes crucial survival information. Some things go unconscious and that is OK, even necessary to survival. Keeping memories that are irrelevant to everyday existence isn’t necessary for our evolution and survival. They can be detrimental unless they help us make adaptive decisions.
Patterns produce complicated networks as a result of the propagation of signals through them. Networks can be thrown into chaotic behavior in response to the propagation of complex input. Human beings are systems with many functions, modes, and feedback/feedforward paths. Thus transformation can involve several, nonlinear phase changes and the emotional power of inner content.
Our perceptions of ourselves and cosmos come through the interplay of figure (ourselves), ground (cosmos) and patterning instinct -- souls hungry for meaning. But what do we really know about this canvas of our consciousness, this Ground Zero of our experience, this transcendental mystery? Wisdom has an emotional content.
If we look deep enough we find the cosmos and its sidereal myths within ourselves. Cosmogonies describe the primordial phase of differentiation between light and matter, mirroring mind and matter. Perhaps the very fabric of our consciousness is not only analogous but identical with the multiverse -- literal as well as figurative.
We live in a matrix of consciousness and life. The molecular basis of creativity and psychological transformation is the mind-brain-gene interaction. It creates novelty. Neuroplasticity synthesizes new mindbody proteins that are structural, functional, and informational. New neurons create new pathways to higher consciousness.
The unconscious permeates consciousness like the virtual vacuum permeates matter at all scales. The root relegere, ‘go through again’ suggests fractal reiterations of transforming experience with focused attention and critical thinking. Thus, our imperfect being realizes its preformed potentiality.
Dialogue with the genes takes place in sleep and dreams, when we are unconscious, the implicite or implicate level of innate processing. The hippocampus distributes new information throughout the cortex, consolidating memory, neurogenesis and gene expression.
Albert Popp has shown that DNA spontaneously emits biophotons during the opening and closing operations of DNA sections that allow genetic expression. Popp suggests that DNA information organizes a coherent network of interactive biophotonic correlates, including mitochondria, morphogenesis, growth and differentiation, and cell regeneration. DNA and biophotons direct the remote control set of the main activities of all vital processes as an antenna or transceiver of biophysical knowledge.
Can the amount of light released and absorbed by nuclear DNA communicate at distances to inform biophysical programming
associated with specific genetic information? Pribram's work suggested the biophotonic field of the brain is an interface with psyche.
There is strong evidence that shows we dream in all sleep states, as well as waking life to incorporate our experiences. The psyche or soul is this on-going dreamlife of the middle between conscious and unconscious worlds of phenomena that cannot be understood with reason alone. Parts of the psyche remain inaccessible through imaginal faculties while others, long buried, can be raised to awareness.
Environments can be notoriously invisible, below our perceptual threshold, and they have their own “ground rules”. Where is our “common ground” connecting spiritual and instinctual aspects, transpersonal and pre-conscious knowledge of the unconscious? Genealogy combined with experiential therapies is one such psychophysical Way of realizing the imaginal body; that body isn't purely somatic but includes the psychological and mystical.
Among other factors we have to consider what a Digital "environment" and technological paradigm of enhanced memory does to human psychology and social epistemology, and how it promotes institutional production of unconsciousness. Psychological independence from any liaison to institutions may be a necessary precondition for individuation, Jung's process of finding one’s own inner truth and fate.
Reconfiguring Social & Cultural Realities
Anthropology has adopted the notion of an 'Ontological Turn,' a form of relativism for truths that transcend us. It is an opening to other kinds of realities or 'worlds' and their 'potential inhabitants' beyond us. We are confronted with the Nature of Nature and the Nature of Culture.
Semiotics treats the dynamic and interactive basis of culture as a system of signs, symbols, and concepts. Any perspective on meaning arises from a web of interactions. Properly understanding meaning requires entry and immersion in this web -- fully entering a worldview or belief system "as if" it were real.
Also, for synchronicity to be more than chance or mere coincidence there must be a mirroring or equivalence of internal and external, subjective and objective aspects of the event. If psychophysical reality touches the heart, reveals clarity or numinosity, even better.
It shows the unity of existence, a Unus Mundus, an experience of timeless and temporal order. In a double wheel or mandala two paradoxical orders of existence are brought together in one figure. Psyche and matter merge in a sublime instant.
Different cultures have different relative notions, social and cultural constructs of how things are, should be, and could be and how we can connect with transformative potential. We 'know' them and consider them 'real' by the way their properties work their ways through us in ways that remake us. Our way of saying how this is opens our human way of being to that which lies beyond it.
How do we differentiate from the family and collective? Genealogy suggests one way ranges from psychophysical cellular excitement to mindful integration of both masculine and feminine archetypes.
Another is psychological polytheism as a manifestation of our varieties, the different people we are, the different longings and desires we have, unfolding where we are heading and what we want. Another is attending to images without interpreting them or turning them into symbols.
Completeness is in the image not in what it means... "every time you say what an image means, get a slap in the face... the dream becomes a koan... if you can literalize a meaning, "interpret" a dream, we are off track, we lost our koan (The dream is the thing, not what it means)." --James Hillman
The unconscious attitude may be the opposite of what we consciously profess. The unknown and inexpressible within us generates symbols and spiritual experience. When we become conscious of that creative expression, we give form to unconscious potentials.
There are other forms of psychic life besides acquiring psychic consciousness. Awareness of the symbolic interiority of the material body leads to direct observation of the subtle body, (Diamond Body, Merkaba, Glorious Body), reimagining our perception of ourselves. Primordial images are foundational principles, including the laws of nature.
The hero's journey may be our individuation process, but that doesn't mean we need to approach our breaking-down and coming together heroically with our over-achieving ego. The drama unfolds like a dream if we pay attention to its emergent qualities.
A capable ego doesn't need to push for the elusive end of the quest of self-discovery. We simply come to know ourselves more fully over our lifetimes, including the gaps in consciousness at the bottom of each breath.
How many times do we come to the paradox? Individuation is about holding the tension of the opposites, our psychological conflicts, conflicting images of ourselves, and unbalanced dichotomies. The greatest of these is the conscious and activated unconscious world whose union creates flexibility and a state change in consciousness in the core of our being.
Our reflective consciousness, psyche recognizes itself in the mirror of cosmos as matter recognizes itself in objective psyche. We can penetrate deeply into the psyche--into the vortex of the internal structuring process. Progressively de-structuring patterns of organization reveals the unfolding and enfolding structure of the unseen world.. This is gnosis -- the wisdom of unknowing absolute knowledge.
The primordial ground is invisible, immeasurable, unmanifest and, in fact, metaphysical, by definition. The void contains the most meaning. How can we attune to the nature of the ground, or ground our meditation?
Can we perceive reality as an unbroken wholeness more than conceptually? Mirrors are a symbol of the soul and often found in the crypts of spiritual leaders. Transcendent experience and the psychic process of imagination are not limited to religions. Jung considered individuation a conscious and unconscious attempt to create wholeness, or self-actualization, a metaphorical transformation of lead to gold.
Our lived realities are first and foremost mythical, not conceptual; they arise from the heart. The Grail, says Jung, is the principle of individuation available within each person. He noted, we each add an infinitesimal amount to the evolution of consciousness.
"For it is really true that if one creates a better relation to the unconscious, it proves to be a helpful power, it then has an activity of its own, it produces helpful dreams, and at times it really produces little miracles." ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 604
This Tao Shall Pass
The contextual background, the invisible environment, is the fundamental ground from which both mind and matter emerge, the luminous absolute space of reality beyond the mere absence of energy/matter. Is our worldview rooted in the ground or groundless speculation? Our cosmology is our map of the soul and the symbolic structure of meaning.
Earth, Humanity, Heavens
Inner and outer Cosmos presents the image of a myriad of perspectives, multiple centers and vortices within a connecting principle. Kaleidoscopic images are an endless cascade of repeating detail. Iteration represents the complicated behavior of simple functions, rational or irrational.
Human achievement is a group effort as no individual has the knowledge or competence to reproduce what society has accomplished. Full lives are lived somewhere between trauma and transcendence on the uncertain road of life. The transformative process continually folds in on itself, stretching and kneading psychic space, bringing in that which is needed, and disposing of irrelevant informational content. Forgetting is useful.
Neuroscientists suggest that forgetfulness is how the brain prioritizes crucial survival information. Some things go unconscious and that is OK, even necessary to survival. Keeping memories that are irrelevant to everyday existence isn’t necessary for our evolution and survival. They can be detrimental unless they help us make adaptive decisions.
Patterns produce complicated networks as a result of the propagation of signals through them. Networks can be thrown into chaotic behavior in response to the propagation of complex input. Human beings are systems with many functions, modes, and feedback/feedforward paths. Thus transformation can involve several, nonlinear phase changes and the emotional power of inner content.
Our perceptions of ourselves and cosmos come through the interplay of figure (ourselves), ground (cosmos) and patterning instinct -- souls hungry for meaning. But what do we really know about this canvas of our consciousness, this Ground Zero of our experience, this transcendental mystery? Wisdom has an emotional content.
If we look deep enough we find the cosmos and its sidereal myths within ourselves. Cosmogonies describe the primordial phase of differentiation between light and matter, mirroring mind and matter. Perhaps the very fabric of our consciousness is not only analogous but identical with the multiverse -- literal as well as figurative.
We live in a matrix of consciousness and life. The molecular basis of creativity and psychological transformation is the mind-brain-gene interaction. It creates novelty. Neuroplasticity synthesizes new mindbody proteins that are structural, functional, and informational. New neurons create new pathways to higher consciousness.
The unconscious permeates consciousness like the virtual vacuum permeates matter at all scales. The root relegere, ‘go through again’ suggests fractal reiterations of transforming experience with focused attention and critical thinking. Thus, our imperfect being realizes its preformed potentiality.
Dialogue with the genes takes place in sleep and dreams, when we are unconscious, the implicite or implicate level of innate processing. The hippocampus distributes new information throughout the cortex, consolidating memory, neurogenesis and gene expression.
Albert Popp has shown that DNA spontaneously emits biophotons during the opening and closing operations of DNA sections that allow genetic expression. Popp suggests that DNA information organizes a coherent network of interactive biophotonic correlates, including mitochondria, morphogenesis, growth and differentiation, and cell regeneration. DNA and biophotons direct the remote control set of the main activities of all vital processes as an antenna or transceiver of biophysical knowledge.
Can the amount of light released and absorbed by nuclear DNA communicate at distances to inform biophysical programming
associated with specific genetic information? Pribram's work suggested the biophotonic field of the brain is an interface with psyche.
There is strong evidence that shows we dream in all sleep states, as well as waking life to incorporate our experiences. The psyche or soul is this on-going dreamlife of the middle between conscious and unconscious worlds of phenomena that cannot be understood with reason alone. Parts of the psyche remain inaccessible through imaginal faculties while others, long buried, can be raised to awareness.
Environments can be notoriously invisible, below our perceptual threshold, and they have their own “ground rules”. Where is our “common ground” connecting spiritual and instinctual aspects, transpersonal and pre-conscious knowledge of the unconscious? Genealogy combined with experiential therapies is one such psychophysical Way of realizing the imaginal body; that body isn't purely somatic but includes the psychological and mystical.
Among other factors we have to consider what a Digital "environment" and technological paradigm of enhanced memory does to human psychology and social epistemology, and how it promotes institutional production of unconsciousness. Psychological independence from any liaison to institutions may be a necessary precondition for individuation, Jung's process of finding one’s own inner truth and fate.
Reconfiguring Social & Cultural Realities
Anthropology has adopted the notion of an 'Ontological Turn,' a form of relativism for truths that transcend us. It is an opening to other kinds of realities or 'worlds' and their 'potential inhabitants' beyond us. We are confronted with the Nature of Nature and the Nature of Culture.
Semiotics treats the dynamic and interactive basis of culture as a system of signs, symbols, and concepts. Any perspective on meaning arises from a web of interactions. Properly understanding meaning requires entry and immersion in this web -- fully entering a worldview or belief system "as if" it were real.
Also, for synchronicity to be more than chance or mere coincidence there must be a mirroring or equivalence of internal and external, subjective and objective aspects of the event. If psychophysical reality touches the heart, reveals clarity or numinosity, even better.
It shows the unity of existence, a Unus Mundus, an experience of timeless and temporal order. In a double wheel or mandala two paradoxical orders of existence are brought together in one figure. Psyche and matter merge in a sublime instant.
Different cultures have different relative notions, social and cultural constructs of how things are, should be, and could be and how we can connect with transformative potential. We 'know' them and consider them 'real' by the way their properties work their ways through us in ways that remake us. Our way of saying how this is opens our human way of being to that which lies beyond it.
How do we differentiate from the family and collective? Genealogy suggests one way ranges from psychophysical cellular excitement to mindful integration of both masculine and feminine archetypes.
Another is psychological polytheism as a manifestation of our varieties, the different people we are, the different longings and desires we have, unfolding where we are heading and what we want. Another is attending to images without interpreting them or turning them into symbols.
Completeness is in the image not in what it means... "every time you say what an image means, get a slap in the face... the dream becomes a koan... if you can literalize a meaning, "interpret" a dream, we are off track, we lost our koan (The dream is the thing, not what it means)." --James Hillman
The unconscious attitude may be the opposite of what we consciously profess. The unknown and inexpressible within us generates symbols and spiritual experience. When we become conscious of that creative expression, we give form to unconscious potentials.
There are other forms of psychic life besides acquiring psychic consciousness. Awareness of the symbolic interiority of the material body leads to direct observation of the subtle body, (Diamond Body, Merkaba, Glorious Body), reimagining our perception of ourselves. Primordial images are foundational principles, including the laws of nature.
The hero's journey may be our individuation process, but that doesn't mean we need to approach our breaking-down and coming together heroically with our over-achieving ego. The drama unfolds like a dream if we pay attention to its emergent qualities.
A capable ego doesn't need to push for the elusive end of the quest of self-discovery. We simply come to know ourselves more fully over our lifetimes, including the gaps in consciousness at the bottom of each breath.
How many times do we come to the paradox? Individuation is about holding the tension of the opposites, our psychological conflicts, conflicting images of ourselves, and unbalanced dichotomies. The greatest of these is the conscious and activated unconscious world whose union creates flexibility and a state change in consciousness in the core of our being.
Our reflective consciousness, psyche recognizes itself in the mirror of cosmos as matter recognizes itself in objective psyche. We can penetrate deeply into the psyche--into the vortex of the internal structuring process. Progressively de-structuring patterns of organization reveals the unfolding and enfolding structure of the unseen world.. This is gnosis -- the wisdom of unknowing absolute knowledge.
The primordial ground is invisible, immeasurable, unmanifest and, in fact, metaphysical, by definition. The void contains the most meaning. How can we attune to the nature of the ground, or ground our meditation?
Can we perceive reality as an unbroken wholeness more than conceptually? Mirrors are a symbol of the soul and often found in the crypts of spiritual leaders. Transcendent experience and the psychic process of imagination are not limited to religions. Jung considered individuation a conscious and unconscious attempt to create wholeness, or self-actualization, a metaphorical transformation of lead to gold.
Our lived realities are first and foremost mythical, not conceptual; they arise from the heart. The Grail, says Jung, is the principle of individuation available within each person. He noted, we each add an infinitesimal amount to the evolution of consciousness.
"For it is really true that if one creates a better relation to the unconscious, it proves to be a helpful power, it then has an activity of its own, it produces helpful dreams, and at times it really produces little miracles." ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 604
This Tao Shall Pass
"The way to truth was the journey of a lonely person to that which is eternally alone." -Plotinus
The Grail cycle, regardless of its origin, requires a commitment and soliude that draws on our internal resources. We train, dedicate and consecrate ourselves in self-initiation, mastering our weaknesses, purifying our nature, and fostering the highest parts of ourselves. We slowly climb the mountain from material being to soul-work. Our 'church' remains hidden because it is inside, our temple within our temples.
The search is always the same: a journey from illusion to light, a pilgrimage toward reality. E ery quest or Grail search must be an individual effort. There is no of joining something, proclaiming a membership, or depending upon a group support. There is no ongregation of the Church of the Holy Grail. Every part of it has to be individual, our soul searching forever for the eternal soul in life.
The Grail cycle, regardless of its origin, requires a commitment and soliude that draws on our internal resources. We train, dedicate and consecrate ourselves in self-initiation, mastering our weaknesses, purifying our nature, and fostering the highest parts of ourselves. We slowly climb the mountain from material being to soul-work. Our 'church' remains hidden because it is inside, our temple within our temples.
The search is always the same: a journey from illusion to light, a pilgrimage toward reality. E ery quest or Grail search must be an individual effort. There is no of joining something, proclaiming a membership, or depending upon a group support. There is no ongregation of the Church of the Holy Grail. Every part of it has to be individual, our soul searching forever for the eternal soul in life.
The Labyrinth
You have reached a passageway between the past and the future.
You are not lost, but what you are looking for has not yet been found.
"May Your Lead Turn to Gold"
"Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky."
~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 758
The psychic seems to me to be in actual fact partly extra-spatial and extra-temporal. “Subtle body" may be a fitting expression for this part of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 522.
The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton, By James P. Driscoll, pg 27
individuation
A Deep Dive Into Memory & Imagination
Individuated Wholeness is Mature Freedom
Iona Miller, (c) 2017
Individuated Wholeness is Mature Freedom
Iona Miller, (c) 2017
"There is one thing in the world which you must never forget. If you were to forget everything else and remembered this, then you would have nothing at all to worry about; but if you were to remember everything else and then forget this, you would have done nothing with your life.
It is as if a king sent you to a country to carry out a particular mission. You go to that country, you do a hundred different things; but if you do not perform the mission assigned to you, it is as if you have done nothing. All human beings come into the world for a particular mission, and that mission is our singular purpose. If we do not enact it, we have done nothing…
Now, if you were to say, “Look, even if I have not performed this mission I have, after all, performed a hundred others,” that would mean nothing. You were not created for those other missions. It is as if you were to buy a sword of priceless Indian steel such as one usually finds only in the treasuries of emperors, and were to turn it into a butcher’s knife for cutting up rotten meat, saying, “Look, I’m not letting this sword stay unused, I am putting it to a thousand highly useful purposes.” Or it is as though you were to take a golden bowl and cook turnips in it, while for just one grain of that gold you could purchase hundreds of pots.
Or it is as though you were to take a dagger of the most finely-wrought and tempered steel and use it as a nail to hang a broken pitcher on, saying, “I am making excellent use of my dagger. I am hanging my broken pitcher on it, after all.” When you can hang a pitcher on a nail that costs only a few cents, what sense does it make to use a dagger worth a fortune?
Remember the root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don’t, you will be exactly like the man who takes his precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his broken pitcher.
You are more valuable than both heaven and earth.
What else can I say? You don’t know your own worth.
Do not sell yourself at a ridiculous price,
You who are so valuable in God’s eyes."
--Jalāl Ad-Din Rumi
“We have to discover what really matters to us, what is the most important thing in our whole life, and then have the courage to live this deepest dream. Carl Jung said, ‘Find the meaning and make the meaning your goal.’ Whatever is most meaningful should be our purpose, whether this is to be a successful businessman or to climb a mountain. But if this one thing is to realize the Truth, then you are a mystic. And to follow the path of a mystic takes courage because you are doing something which does not belong to the mind or to the senses, but to the unknown and the unknowable.” --Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Love Is a Fire
"We are not liberated by leaving something behind but only by fulfilling our task as mixta composita i.e., human beings between the opposites." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
"The union of opposites in the stone is possible only when the adept has become One him/herself. The unity of the stone is the equivalent of individuation, by which [we are] made one; we would say that the stone is a projection of the unified self. This formulation is psychologically correct. It does not, however, take sufficient account of the fact that the stone is a transcendent unity. We must therefore emphasize that though the self can become a symbolic content of consciousness, it is, as a supraordinate totality, necessarily transcendent as well (CW 9/2, par. 264)." -Carl Jung, "The Alchemical Interpretation of the Fish," in Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self
"I am a psychologist and empiricist, and for me the meaning of life does not lie in annulling it for the sake of an alleged "possibility of transcendental existence" which nobody knows how to envisage.
We are men and not gods. The meaning of human development is to be found in the fulfilment of this life. It is rich enough in marvels. And not in detachment from this world.
How can I fulfil the meaning of my life if the goal I set myself is the "disappearance of individual consciousness"? What am I without this individual consciousness of mine? Even what I have called the "self" functions only by virtue of an ego which hears the voice of that greater being." --C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381
"The term self is often mixed up with the idea of God. I would not do that."
~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978.
"So the self is not only an unconscious fact, but also a conscious fact: the ego is the visibility of the self." ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.
He [God] fills us with evil as well as with good, otherwise he would not need to be feared; and because he wants to become man, the uniting of his antinomy must take place in man. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 747.
He [Man] must know something of God’s nature and of metaphysical processes if he is to understand himself and thereby achieve gnosis of the Divine. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 747.
One should make clear to oneself what it means when God becomes man. It means more or less what Creation meant in the beginning, namely an objectivation of God. ~Jung, CW 11, Para 747.
It is as if a king sent you to a country to carry out a particular mission. You go to that country, you do a hundred different things; but if you do not perform the mission assigned to you, it is as if you have done nothing. All human beings come into the world for a particular mission, and that mission is our singular purpose. If we do not enact it, we have done nothing…
Now, if you were to say, “Look, even if I have not performed this mission I have, after all, performed a hundred others,” that would mean nothing. You were not created for those other missions. It is as if you were to buy a sword of priceless Indian steel such as one usually finds only in the treasuries of emperors, and were to turn it into a butcher’s knife for cutting up rotten meat, saying, “Look, I’m not letting this sword stay unused, I am putting it to a thousand highly useful purposes.” Or it is as though you were to take a golden bowl and cook turnips in it, while for just one grain of that gold you could purchase hundreds of pots.
Or it is as though you were to take a dagger of the most finely-wrought and tempered steel and use it as a nail to hang a broken pitcher on, saying, “I am making excellent use of my dagger. I am hanging my broken pitcher on it, after all.” When you can hang a pitcher on a nail that costs only a few cents, what sense does it make to use a dagger worth a fortune?
Remember the root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don’t, you will be exactly like the man who takes his precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his broken pitcher.
You are more valuable than both heaven and earth.
What else can I say? You don’t know your own worth.
Do not sell yourself at a ridiculous price,
You who are so valuable in God’s eyes."
--Jalāl Ad-Din Rumi
“We have to discover what really matters to us, what is the most important thing in our whole life, and then have the courage to live this deepest dream. Carl Jung said, ‘Find the meaning and make the meaning your goal.’ Whatever is most meaningful should be our purpose, whether this is to be a successful businessman or to climb a mountain. But if this one thing is to realize the Truth, then you are a mystic. And to follow the path of a mystic takes courage because you are doing something which does not belong to the mind or to the senses, but to the unknown and the unknowable.” --Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Love Is a Fire
"We are not liberated by leaving something behind but only by fulfilling our task as mixta composita i.e., human beings between the opposites." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
"The union of opposites in the stone is possible only when the adept has become One him/herself. The unity of the stone is the equivalent of individuation, by which [we are] made one; we would say that the stone is a projection of the unified self. This formulation is psychologically correct. It does not, however, take sufficient account of the fact that the stone is a transcendent unity. We must therefore emphasize that though the self can become a symbolic content of consciousness, it is, as a supraordinate totality, necessarily transcendent as well (CW 9/2, par. 264)." -Carl Jung, "The Alchemical Interpretation of the Fish," in Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self
"I am a psychologist and empiricist, and for me the meaning of life does not lie in annulling it for the sake of an alleged "possibility of transcendental existence" which nobody knows how to envisage.
We are men and not gods. The meaning of human development is to be found in the fulfilment of this life. It is rich enough in marvels. And not in detachment from this world.
How can I fulfil the meaning of my life if the goal I set myself is the "disappearance of individual consciousness"? What am I without this individual consciousness of mine? Even what I have called the "self" functions only by virtue of an ego which hears the voice of that greater being." --C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381
"The term self is often mixed up with the idea of God. I would not do that."
~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978.
"So the self is not only an unconscious fact, but also a conscious fact: the ego is the visibility of the self." ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 977.
He [God] fills us with evil as well as with good, otherwise he would not need to be feared; and because he wants to become man, the uniting of his antinomy must take place in man. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 747.
He [Man] must know something of God’s nature and of metaphysical processes if he is to understand himself and thereby achieve gnosis of the Divine. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 747.
One should make clear to oneself what it means when God becomes man. It means more or less what Creation meant in the beginning, namely an objectivation of God. ~Jung, CW 11, Para 747.