ABSURD PREJUDICE TO SUPPOSE THAT
EXISTENCE CAN ONLY BE PHYSICAL...

As a matter of fact, the only form of existence of which we have immediate knowledge is psychic [i.e., in the mind].

We might as well say, on the contrary, that physical existence is a mere inference, since we know of matter only in so far as we perceive psychic images mediated by the senses." - Carl Jung

“Is that which science calls the “psyche” not merely a question-mark arbitrarily confined within the skull, but rather a door that opens upon the human world from a world beyond, now and again allowing strange and unseizable potencies to act upon him and to remove him, as if upon the wings of the night, from the level of common humanity to that of a more personal vocation?” ― C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

TRUE SELF (BEYOND EGO) =

 MULTIPLICITY OF ARCHETYPES 

(or mythological patterns) transcending experience.

MEANING OF MYTH: As the ego looks in the direction of the Self, the transpersonal center of the psyche (transcending the individual), it tends to experience the Self not as a unity (at least not at first) but as a multiplicity of archetypal factors that one can think of as being represented by mythological gods.

The gods can be seen to stand for the archetypes, the basic patterns within the human psyche that exist independent of personal experience. We all have all of them present, and it is in our best interest to honor all of them at appropriate times and in any given situation because without this balance we run the risk of over-identification with one element and thereby do violence to all the others. In turn, this sort of extremism throws our psyche out of whack and we can only see one facet of ourselves and the world. – partially paraphrased from Eternal Drama by Edward F. Edinger

EGO & SELF: The ego receives the light from the self...

Though we know of the self, yet it is not known. You may see a big town and know its name and geographical position, yet you do not know a single one of its inhabitants. You may even know a man through daily intercourse, yet you can be entirely ignorant of his real character.

The ego is contained in the self as it is contained in the universe of which we know only the tiniest section...

If the self could be wholly experienced, it would be a limited experience whereas in reality, its experience is unlimited and endless. It is our ego-consciousness that is capable of only of limited experience. We can only say that the self is limitless, but we cannot experience its infinity. 

I can say that my consciousness is the same as that of the self, but it is nothing but words since there is not the slightest evidence that I participate more or further in the self than my ego-consciousness reaches.

The universe does not seem to exist for the sole purpose of man denying or escaping it.......In order to get rid of opposites, I need/ must accept them first, but this leads away from the self. I must also earn how opposites can be united, and not how they can be avoided...

As long as I am on the first part of the road I have to forget the self in order to get properly into the mill of the opposites, otherwise, I live only fragmentarily and conditionally. Although the self is my origin, it is also the goal of my quest. When it was my origin, I did not know myself, and when I did learn about myself, I did not know the self.

INDIVIDUALISM: According to Carl Jung, "Individuation" is the development of consciousness...

Transforming his/her personality to reach a higher level of consciousness, self-realized Individuals become aware of their own unique innate potentials, that which distinguishes them from the collective...

Society is essential for human existence... The Individual lends himself to express the subconscious aspirations of the collective of his time, giving conscious expression to the needs and aspirations of the society through his actions. The Individual is indispensable for human accomplishment and for the development of the society.

Society inhibits the formation of Individuality... The formed Individual rejects conformity for the sake of conformity. Individuality can develop only when a person chooses to do what he thinks is right, consciously. To cling to what is familiar, acceptable and comfortable is to take refuge in conventionality. Individuality requires self-confidence, responsibility and courage. Development of Individuality is possible only in freedom. In the absence of freedom, people do not accept responsibility or adhere to high values.

In Jung's understanding, everything needs its opposite for its existence. The indivisible, whole being that the Individual is, is made complete when he accepts and integrates all aspects of his personality, realizing in the process that contradictions are complements. FROM WORLD ACADEMY OF ART & SCIENCE.

JUNG/ INDIVIDUALISM "Jung stressed the importance of individual rights in a persons relation to the state and society. 

He saw that the state was treated as "a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected" but that this personality was "only camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it", and referred to the state as a form of slavery. 

He also thought that the state "swallowed up [people's] religious forces", and therefore that the state had "taken the place of God"—making it comparable to a religion in which "state slavery is a form of worship." 

Jung observed that governments "stage acts of state" comparable to religious displays: "Brass bands, flags, banners, parades and monster demonstrations are no different in principle from ecclesiastical processions, cannonades and fire to scare off demons." 

From Jung's perspective, this replacement of God with the state in a mass society led to the dislocation of the religious drive and resulted in the same fanaticism of the church-states of the dark ages—wherein the more the state is 'worshiped', the more freedom and morality are suppressed; this ultimately leaves the individual psychically undeveloped with extreme feelings of marginalization." From The Native American Taoist.

ARCHETYPAL FORCES/ TRENDS/ CURRENTS...... 

 “It certainly does seem that certain individuals occasionally get in contact with forces outside themselves, something like cog-wheels grinding away in their spirits, that suddenly, perhaps only momentarily, slip into the notches of gigantic, unseen cog-wheels of cosmic scope. Maybe that’s what is meant by ‘getting in touch with the infinite." - Robert E. Howard QUOTED AT “JUNG AT HEART”, THE CIMMERIAN WEBSITE

THE TAO. “In Chinese philosophy, there is the idea of the “middle Path” that lies between the opposites. It is called Tao. Tao is usually associated with the name of the philosopher; Lao-Tze, born in 604 B.C. Tao expresses itself as, “Dwelling without desire, one perceiveth its essence; clinging to desire, one seeth only its outer form.” – “Tao is an irrational, hence a wholly inconceivable fact. Tao is essence, but unseizable, incomprehensible.”

“Tao is an irrational union of the opposites (opposites-one’s good and bad sides blended to make an acceptable whole) - therefore a symbol which is and is not...

“He whose actions are in harmony with Tao becometh one with Tao. Therefore the complete person is freed from the opposites whose intimate connection, and alternating appearance, he is aware of. Therefore to withdraw oneself is the celestial way, and he is the complete one inaccessible to intimacy, inaccessible to estrangement, inaccessible to profit, inaccessible to injury, inaccessible to honor, inaccessible to disgrace! Being one with Tao resembles the spiritual condition of a child.

“The Taoistic religion says that Tao is divided into a principal pair of opposites, Yang and Yin.

“Yang is warmth, light, masculinity.
“Yin is cold, darkness, femininity.
“Yang is also heaven.
“Yin is earth.
“From Yang force arises, Schen, the celestial portion of the human soul.
“From yin force arises, Kwei, the earthly part.
“As a microcosm, man is also in some degree a reconciler of the pairs of opposites. Heaven, man and earth form the three chief elements of the world...

“The Chinese Tao presentation is also suggested in the familiar passage in Faust:

“Two souls, alas! Within my bosom dwell-
“One would from the other sever:
“The one in full delight of live
“Clings with clutching organs to the world:
“The other, mightily, from earthly dust
“Would mount on high to the ancestral fields.

“The existence of two mutually contending tendencies, both striving to drag man into extreme attitudes and entangle him in the world-whether upon the spiritual of the material side (thereby setting him at variance with himself) – demands the existence of a counterweight, which is just this irrational fact: Tao. That is why the followers of the Taoistic philosophy make anxious efforts to live in harmony with Tao, lest they fall into a conflict of the opposites, Since Tao is an irrational fact, it cannot be deliberately achieved, a fact which Lao-Tze emphasizes.

“Thus the aim of the Taoistic ethic sets out to find deliverance from that tension of the opposites, which is an inherent property of the universe, by a return to Tao.” -Author Jane Cabot Reid from “Jung, My Mother and I”; Pages 339-341. FROM CARL JUNG ON POWER, LOVE AND TAO.

NULLIFICATION OF SPACE/ TIME : “... spatial distance is, in the psychic sense, relative. In other words, physical space is not under all circumstances a definite datum but under certain conditions is also a psychic function. One might call it psychically contractile...

“From similar experiences we must conclude that this nullification of space proceeds with great speed, so that perceptions of this kind occur almost simultaneously with the accident. We can therefore speak of a psychic nullification of time as well. We could also suppose that the victim of the accident sent out a kind of radio message. But this is contradicted by the fact that occasionally details are “transmitted” which occurred only after the death... In that event there can be no question of a transmission by a dying man. It is more probable that it is a perception by someone alive and seeing...

“ … the psyche does not exist wholly in time and space. It is very probable that only what we call consciousness is contained in space and time, and that the rest of the psyche, the unconscious, exists in a state of relative spacelessness and timelessness. For the psyche this means a relative externality and a relative non-separation from other psyches, or a oneness with them... FROM CARL JUNG'S LETTER TO PASTOR FRITZ PFAFFLIN

OBSERVER EFFECT: In quantum experiments, subatomic particles appear to exist only as a wave of probability until they are observed. When this happens, the wave collapses into a single place in time, known as ‘The Observer Effect’. The observer has created reality simply by perceiving it.

PSYCHOPHYSICAL INTERRELATION: “WRESTLING WITH THE ONE.” MATTER MOSTLY SPACE: “If you took out all the empty space from between the particles that make up the atoms of which Planet Earth is composed, the entire ball would fit neatly in the palm of your hand... so, why can’t you walk straight through this planet?

“… no matter how they  (quantum particles) combine, there is one rule they all keep: No two of them can do exactly the same thing.

For physicists, “doing the same thing” means occupying the same quantum state... It’s only because every particle must be different from every other particle in such things as energy level, momentum and position, that we end up with a hugely variegated universe—or any universe at all. 

“This principle was discovered by one of the fathers of quantum physics, Wolfgang Pauli. If Pauli would have rewritten Genesis, he might have begun, “In the beginning, G‑d granted every particle of matter exclusive rights. And so, a multitude of things came into being.”

“… But when it comes to quantum physics, how does each particle know it’s supposed to keep this rule?

Bigger problem: How does each particle know the state of every other particle in the universe so that it won’t imitate it?

“Even bigger problem: Pauli’s exclusion principle is just that—a principle. Yet it’s due to that principle that matter occupies space—and that we can touch matter.

“We like to bury those issues by saying there are “fields” or “laws.” Words like those are useful at times. But let’s not allow them to blur a deep truth staring us in the face: We touch with our fingers not stuff, but deep wisdom. The ultimate wisdom.” FROM CHABAD.ORG 

RED BOOK SPIRITUALISM... Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, Ph.D is an eminent scholar on the subject of C. G. Jung’s Red Book...

Dr. Hoeller defines Jung as a prophet who told the truth of the Gods–that multi-dimensional transcendent power that animates our spiritual lives. The Red Book is an account of Jung’s transformational journey toward the divine using imagery and mythological messages from deep within his psyche...

Of this work Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller explained, “The magical is what feeds our soul. If you let it, life sinks to a level of blandness. Gray consciousness happens when all the magic is gone; all the imagination. A human being does not live by material things alone. Human beings can’t live without hope, spirit, poetry, beauty, and mythology. An absence of the magical makes life gray and bland. God is alive. Magic is alive.”

As Dr. Heoller tells us, the psycho cosmology expressed in Jung’s work tells of the divinity indwelling in the human being. When one has contact with that indwelling entity, the joyful bliss for which we search, comes alive. Jung’s journey was a journey of transcendence to this divinity through the supernatural, magical, mystical, and divine initiation; a change of consciousness toward a new beginning; toward the blissful ecstasy of living in the present. FROM Elven World

SYNCHRONICITY... a significant coincidence of physical and psychological (psychic) phenomena that are acausal connected...

Behind all these phenomena Jung places the archetype or the constellation of an archetype, which, in his view, is a process that engages equally objective manifestations, in the physical world, and subjective ones, in the psychological universe.

Synchronicity, as an explicative theory, applies to phenomena from the area of parapsychology, prevision, and premonition. FROM Carl Jung- Synchronicity.

BELOW: NOTE ASIDE/ Reality's quadrants: space/time continuum, indestructible energy, causality, and synchronicity.

Synchronicity works because time is a fabric (Einstein) interwoven w/ space. PSYCHE & MATTER AS ONE: Active archetypes underlie and cut across the spacetime continuum 

We tend not to see meaning in chance because we focus on single events and their causes, not on how chance events arrange themselves in groups or series.

BOOK REVIEW/ GARRY LACHMAN: Jung the Mystic: The Exoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung’s Life and Teachings.

… (Carl) Jung himself was apparently much at odds with the characterization of his work as mysticism... Jung “seemed to have two minds about the supernatural: a public one that wanted to understand it ‘scientifically,’ and a private one that acknowledged ghosts, visions, and premonitions as part of the essential mystery of life.” 

… Jung did not concisely and consistently define his concepts and terms, preferring to use a “multiplicity of ill-formulated definitions for the same thing.” As one might imagine, this provides a challenge to those who expect to see consistency and clarity in his life.

… A childhood spent primarily alone produced an odd combination of inner direction and a lifelong fascination with the more tangible enjoyments, such as mountains, water, and beer.

Lachman discusses Jung’s loneliness as a child and his creation of a “homunculus,” or little man, which he kept in a secret place and used as a repository for his fears and as an object of security in his insecure world. When he was older, this came back to Jung as a realization of his early involvement in a very common human tradition: that of creating a symbol. Jung would later use this as evidence of his ideas about our sharing a “collective unconscious,” things that humans share over the ages, often without conscious recognition of that sharing.

… A running theme throughout the book is the image of the “Herr Doctor Professor,” which represents Jung’s own internal identity and also the major conflict between his desire to keep his work strictly scientific and his attraction to the decidedly non-scientific world of the supernatural. From PsychCentral.

ACTIVE IMAGINATION is not hypnosis, contemplation, or meditation (but all three).

Hypnosis (is) … the world of unconsciousness. Contemplation … sharpen(s) the mind's reasoning ability. Meditation asks us to move away from the dream world and our everyday mind through focusing on a single word, our breathing, or our movement...

Elements of all of these practices are touched upon when practicing Active Imagination. 

But, Active Imagination relies upon an alert mind, the non-rational, and a high level of inner creative fludity...

Events that bring a person to relax their everyday awareness (e.g. listening to stories, watching the flames in a fireplace, listening to the sea) can move us into Active Imagination. From Mystical Experience Registry. See also Wikipedia and Jung Resources.

PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES:

 Keirsey temperaments

THINKERS/ PRODUCERS
(opposite: Feeling) analytical types!

FEELERS/ INTEGRATORS
(opposite: Thinking) practical types!

INTUITIVES/ ENTREPREURS
(opposite: sensation) insightful types!

SENSATES/ ADMINISTRATORS
(opposite: intuition) sensible types!

* SENSING/ ADMINISTRATION = getting information by means of the senses. Good at looking and listening and generally getting to know the world. It is irrational function, involving perception rather than judging.

Sensation types: Administrator: sensible types! (Opposite of Intuition.) Uses systems; organizes and controls things; cooperates to carry out tasks. Seldom make errors of fact. Are patient with routine details. Usually reach a conclusion step-by-step. Tend to be good at precise work. (Opposite: intuition)

Ensures rules in place and followed, plans made and adhered to. Precise and accurate, creates methods and procedures to do things "right". Logical. Clean up carelessness. Like things humming at a steady pace, and open to the slow and careful. Drawn to tasks requiring systemic thinking and precision.

Introverted sensates listen to fine music, surrounded by art and beautiful objects, delighting in haute cuisine. Interested in impact on senses. Extroverted sensates manufacture and provide marvelous music, art objects and haute cuisine that the introverted sensates take so much pleasure in.

Shadow: Solely caught up in concrete realities of the here and now. Can't read between the lines. Can't see behind facades. Taking things literally. Being gullible. Dislikes problems unless there are standard ways to solve them. Like an established way of doing things. Enjoy using skills already learned more than learning new ones. Work more steadily, with realistic idea of how long it will take. Are impatient when details get complicated. Are not often inspired, and rarely trust the inspiration when they are.

* THINKING/ PRODUCING = evaluating information or ideas rationally, logically. It is rational function, involving decision making or judging.

Thinking types: Producers: analytical types! (Opposite of Feeling.) Gets things done; sense of urgency and efficiency; overcomes opposition to accomplish results. Like analysis and putting things in logical order. Can get along without harmony. Are able to reprimand people or fire them when necessary.(Opposite: feeling)

Drive and the discipline for results. Impatient, active, and busy. Little time for idle chit-chat. Direct and to the point. Behind-the scenes movers and shakers. Attracted to high-intensity activity. Too busy to "waste time" with meetings. Cut small talk and get the job done!

Introverted thinker: occupied with inner philosophical speculations. Extroverted thinker: Involved in out-in-the-world problem solving and understanding.

Shadow: Provides rules and structure. Sticks foot in mouth. Says inappropriate things. Seemingly cold, can be staunchly moral. Does not show emotion readily and are often uncomfortable dealing with people's feelings. May hurt people's feelings without knowing it. Ten to decide impersonally, sometimes paying insufficient attention to people's wishes. Need to be treated fairly. Are more analytically orientated - respond more easily to people's thoughts. Tend to be firm minded.

* INTUITING/ ENTREPRENEUR = a perception working outside usual conscious processes. It is irrational or perceptual, like sensing, but comes from the complex integration of large amounts of information. Jung said it was like seeing around corners.

Intuition types: Entrepreneur: insightful types! (Opposite of Sensing.) Sees and seizes opportunities; finding what makes the most sense in any situation; brings others into alliance to accomplish tasks. Are patient with complicated situations. Visualizes an array of possibilities and out of them a probability, which may not be visible at all! (Opposite: sensation)

Ideas person, asking "why?" or "why not?" Visionary with dreams, plans, schemes. Leads others to ideas not pursued on their own. Creative & risk-takers. Bored with short-term tasks, prefer long-term vision. Charismatic, generating new ideas and new approaches.

Introverted intuitives populate the monasteries and mountaintops of the world, "mystical" places that are "close to the gods." Extroverted intuitives play "games" at racetracks or stock market, or are at psychic-reading parlors, chasing their fancy wherever it flutters.

Shadow: Does not perceive objective reality very well. Misses the obvious. A dreamer! Likes solving new problems. Dislikes doing the same thing repeatedly. Enjoy learning new skills more than using them. Works in burst of energy powered by enthusiasm, with slack periods in between. Reach conclusions quickly. Are impatient with routine details. Follow inspirations, good and bad. May make errors of fact. Dislike taking time for precision.


* FEELING/ INTEGRATOR = evaluating by weighing overall, emotional response. Jung termed it as rational in a practical sense.

Feeling types: Integrator: practical types! (Opposite of Thinking.) Understands people, figuring out their highest and best use and inspiring them to be all they can; works with existing circumstances to promote quality. Makes structure resilient. States logical inferences a' la Sherlock Holmes. Enjoy pleasing people, even in unimportant things. Like harmony, efficiency.

Are more people-oriented - respond more easily to people's values. (Opposite: thinking)
People-oriented. Value social harmony. Thrive on peacemaking/ teamwork. Pleasant, amiable, empathetic, cooperative. Consensus trumps strong positions.

Introverted feelers: May be madly in love with you, but it's "none of your damned business." Extroverted feelers: Must communicate their feelings at all costs, with flowers, poetic greeting cards or candlelight dinners by the sea.

Shadow: Rotten mathematician. Gush effusively, or keep the gushing bottled up. Misinterpret others intentions, motivations. Tend to be very aware of other people and their feelings. May be badly disturbed by office feuds. Often let decisions be influenced by their own or other people's personal likes and wishes. Need occasional praise. Dislike telling people unpleasant things. Tend to be sympathetic