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
"An archetype belongs to the structure of the collective unconscious, but as the collective unconscious is in ourselves, it is also a structure of ourselves.
It is part of the basic structure of our instinctual nature.
Anything brought back into that instinctive pattern is supposed to be cured.
This structure of man is supposed to be a wholly adapted animal, a remarkable thing able to live perfectly.
Most of our psychogenic ills consist in the fact that we have deviated from the instinctive pattern of man.
We suddenly find ourselves in the air, our tree no longer receives the nourishing substance from the earth.
So you see, when you get back into an archetypal situation you are in your right instinctive attitude in which you must be when you want to live on the earth's surface; in your right atmosphere with your right food, etc.
The archetype is the instinctive natural man, as he always has been.
The old priests and medicine men understood this, not by knowledge, but by intuition.
They tried to get a sick man back into an archetypal situation.
If a man had a snake-bite we would give him serum, but the old Egyptian priest would go to his library and get down the book with the story of Isis, take it to the patient and read to him of the Sun God Ra, how while he was walking over Egypt his wife Isis made a terrible worm, a sand-viper with only its snout showing out of the sand.
She put it in his path so that it would bite him.
He stepped on the venerable worm and he was badly bitten and poisoned, his jaws and all his limbs were trembling.
The gods picked him up and thought he must die.
They called in Mother Isis, for she could cure him; then the hymn was read over him, but her magic could not cure him entirely and he had to withdraw on the back of the Heavenly Cow and give place to the younger god.
Now, how could reading this hymn over Ra cure him of the snake bite?
What is the use of such foolishness?
I assume that these people were by no means idiots.
They knew very well what they did, they were as intelligent as we are, they had good results with these methods, so they used them, it was "good medicine."
When you study the pharmacopoeia of old Galen you get sick,
a most amazing dung-heap, yet he was an excellent doctor.
They had a pharmacology that was absolutely ridiculous according to our ideas, but we do it from the outside in, in a rational way, while they did it from the inside out.
We never see the curative things that come from within; Christian Science recognizes them, but clinical medicine even in our day is living and working by the outer facts.
What that old Egyptian priest tried to do was to convey to that man that his suffering was not only man's fate but God's fate.
It had to be so, and Mother Isis, who made the poison, can also cure its effect (not entirely but nearly so).
By bringing the patient to the eternal truth of the archetypal image of the snake-bite brought about by the Mother, his instinctive powers are aroused, and that is exceedingly helpful.
Now with our patient, if the archetypal powers could be brought out he would be helped.
But with us it is not so easy, we are much too far away from such an image.
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
"An archetype belongs to the structure of the collective unconscious, but as the collective unconscious is in ourselves, it is also a structure of ourselves.
It is part of the basic structure of our instinctual nature.
Anything brought back into that instinctive pattern is supposed to be cured.
This structure of man is supposed to be a wholly adapted animal, a remarkable thing able to live perfectly.
Most of our psychogenic ills consist in the fact that we have deviated from the instinctive pattern of man.
We suddenly find ourselves in the air, our tree no longer receives the nourishing substance from the earth.
So you see, when you get back into an archetypal situation you are in your right instinctive attitude in which you must be when you want to live on the earth's surface; in your right atmosphere with your right food, etc.
The archetype is the instinctive natural man, as he always has been.
The old priests and medicine men understood this, not by knowledge, but by intuition.
They tried to get a sick man back into an archetypal situation.
If a man had a snake-bite we would give him serum, but the old Egyptian priest would go to his library and get down the book with the story of Isis, take it to the patient and read to him of the Sun God Ra, how while he was walking over Egypt his wife Isis made a terrible worm, a sand-viper with only its snout showing out of the sand.
She put it in his path so that it would bite him.
He stepped on the venerable worm and he was badly bitten and poisoned, his jaws and all his limbs were trembling.
The gods picked him up and thought he must die.
They called in Mother Isis, for she could cure him; then the hymn was read over him, but her magic could not cure him entirely and he had to withdraw on the back of the Heavenly Cow and give place to the younger god.
Now, how could reading this hymn over Ra cure him of the snake bite?
What is the use of such foolishness?
I assume that these people were by no means idiots.
They knew very well what they did, they were as intelligent as we are, they had good results with these methods, so they used them, it was "good medicine."
When you study the pharmacopoeia of old Galen you get sick,
a most amazing dung-heap, yet he was an excellent doctor.
They had a pharmacology that was absolutely ridiculous according to our ideas, but we do it from the outside in, in a rational way, while they did it from the inside out.
We never see the curative things that come from within; Christian Science recognizes them, but clinical medicine even in our day is living and working by the outer facts.
What that old Egyptian priest tried to do was to convey to that man that his suffering was not only man's fate but God's fate.
It had to be so, and Mother Isis, who made the poison, can also cure its effect (not entirely but nearly so).
By bringing the patient to the eternal truth of the archetypal image of the snake-bite brought about by the Mother, his instinctive powers are aroused, and that is exceedingly helpful.
Now with our patient, if the archetypal powers could be brought out he would be helped.
But with us it is not so easy, we are much too far away from such an image.
transformation
Group Transformation
Worldview Warfare in Personal Development & Leadership Training
Iona Miller, © 2015
"Nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your mind."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
"In singleness every man shall place himself above the other,
so that every man may come to himself and avoid slavery."
--Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 352.
“And you can see the marks are wising up,
standing around in sullen groups and that mutter gets louder and louder."
--William Burroughs, Nova Express
Worldview Warfare in Personal Development & Leadership Training
Iona Miller, © 2015
"Nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your mind."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
"In singleness every man shall place himself above the other,
so that every man may come to himself and avoid slavery."
--Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 352.
“And you can see the marks are wising up,
standing around in sullen groups and that mutter gets louder and louder."
--William Burroughs, Nova Express