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An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by RY Deshpande on Fri 30 Apr 2010 03:30 AM IST | Permanent Link | Cosmos

Abstract

In Part V, I concentrate on important foundational aspects of Jung’s psychology of individuation. I begin with an Aurobindian perspective based on the understanding of a Sri Aurobindo ashram psychologist and early sadhak of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Prof Indra Sen. He also acknowledged the value of Freud’s discoveries for moral development and self-knowledge. More importantly from the point of view of this essay, his view on Jung is particularly favorable, including recognizing the central value of the psychic being in Jung’s approach to healing and the process of individuation. I then show how Jung not only had experiential knowledge of the psychic being or central Self, but that it is an integral aspect of his approach to psychology. Following that I discuss the dynamics of the individuation process, which involves integration of the shadow and the persona, and the anima/animus, which, in turn, forges a link to the archetypal psyche including the archetype of the Self. I discuss dream interpretation and dreams, which, for Jung, is an important path of self-knowledge. I then go into some detail on alchemy as an important basis for Jung’s system of psychology, both in practical terms and as a spiritual phenomenon that includes the spiritualization of matter and the concretization of the spirit. I note how Arabian alchemy and Tantra had an important influence on Western alchemy, which, significantly, thereby imported the value of Eros to Europe. I end the essay by noting the similarities in Jung’s approach to psychology, its goal of increasing consciousness, its subjectivity in relationship to the objective psyche, the principle of synchronicity and acausality, and allowance for error and Sri Aurobindo’s indications on the science of psychology. I note that Prof Indra Sen suggests that an important area of research would be a comparison between the psychic being of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and Jung’s central Self. I suggest that research on conscious attitudes, beliefs, values and practices, and the response of the unconscious through dreams and other products of the unconscious could be of interest as well.

Alchemy

Jung’s system of psychology grew out of the Western mind, with its extraverted this worldly bias and idealism, along with the personal God of Christianity, its Logos orientation and confining tradition, doctrine and dogma. Jung was very much aware that although there is no impersonal God in official Christianity, amongst the more introverted mystics, Gnostics and alchemists, there was, for instance, as indicated in phrase that was popular amongst them in the Middle-ages, that God is a circle with a centre that is everywhere and circumference that is nowhere. But this view was marginal and didn’t penetrate the more common mind. Jung felt that the European mind typically has difficulty differentiating between the Purusha and sattvam, which I take to mean that it has difficulty discerning the difference between a sort of mental harmony, which comes with much repression and the light and harmonious balance of the unrepressed sattwic nature connected to the Purusha, the Being of Light. [41] Whereas the more receptive Eastern mind suffers the dramas of life and develops a more observant and philosophical attitude, the more predatory and idealistic Western mind wants to conquer suffering and achieve what it believes is vital and material happiness. The more extraverted Westerner, enmeshed in Prakriti, has produced an exceptional science and dazzling technology, but tends to go inside from external involvement in duality, while the introverted Indian philosophic mind more naturally look inwards and, from a sense of oneness, engages life.

Alchemy in the Christian era was a compensation for the one-sidedness of formal Christianity and Christian culture, which neglected Eros, the divinity of nature and the impersonal God, repressed the old mythological gods altogether, and turned the chthonic gods and goddesses into aspects of the devil. There was an interest in alchemy amongst such significant Christians as Albertus Magnus, possibly his acolyte, Thomas Aquinas, and the physician, Paracelsus, amongst others. Alchemy was influenced by Christianity and, at least, amongst Christian alchemists, symbolic images were found in Christianity, which were interpreted in such a way as to parallel alchemical symbols. Alchemy had historical connections to Gnosticism, was influenced by mythology and the European alchemists looked to Aristotle’s notion of a common eternal or divine matter with changing form as manifested in the different substances to substantiate their endeavors. They were natural philosophers that found divinity in the forces of nature and the idea of eternal matter justified their attempts to change one substance into another, notably lead into gold.

There were two sides of Western alchemy, the laboratory and laboratory techniques including a kind of scientific observation, and the imaginative side with its mystical tendencies. In comparison to Chinese alchemy and Indian yoga, whose practices and imagination concentrate on the inner subtle body, Western alchemists, with their more extraverted bias, imaginatively saw the same process happening in the chemical retort. The alchemists referred to their imagination as imaginatio vera, that, they believed, resembles something of the way God imagines the world, and therefore can have a supernatural magic effect on matter. Jung developed a dynamic method of meditation he called active imagination as a contemporary parallel to the alchemical approach to imagination, in order to gain access to the collective unconscious and objective psyche in a personal way involving dialogue with aspects of the unconscious. The other aspect of European alchemy evolved into modern chemistry and, by the eighteenth century, alchemy in the West all but died out.

In the twentieth century Jung took it upon himself to elaborately show the merits of alchemy as a spiritual discipline, practical yoga and precursor to depth-psychology. He began empirically in relationship with the modern Western mind, its religious and cultural roots, and its mental, materialistic and personal orientation to life and meditation, its unrelated idealism and scientific and technological penchant. His interest was initiated by several dreams, the most significant taking place in 1926 at the end of his intensive period of confronting the unconscious, his fascination with Gnosticism and writing and illustrating the Red Book. [42]

Two dreams that he recorded in Memories, Dreams, Reflections were especially important. In one dream he explored an unknown wing of his house to discover a wonderful library, dating mainly from the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Amongst the books were some embellished with strange copper engravings and illustrative alchemical symbols. Jung was ignorant of alchemy at the time but some fifteen years later he had, in actual fact, assembled a similar library. The other, most crucial, dream ended when the gates of a courtyard in front of the main entrance to a grand manor house, clanged shut, trapping Jung and the coachman. The coachman exclaimed that they were caught in the seventeenth century and, with resignation, Jung thought that they shall be caught there for years. As a matter of fact, alchemy continued in Europe into the seventeenth century, after which it evolved into chemistry. Jung, it turned out, devoted many years to the study of alchemy, beginning two years after having these dreams under the initial inspiration of receiving a book from Richard Wilhelm, the man who initiated the spread of the teachings of the I Ching in the West, on Chinese alchemy, entitled The Secret of the Golden Flower, attributed to a Taoist disciple of Lao Tzu.

Jung realized that he was destined to study alchemy from the beginning, and quickly saw that his system of psychology and his experiences coincided with the experiences of the alchemists. He had, he observed, “stumbled upon the historical counterpart of my psychology of the unconscious… [where] the uninterrupted chain back to Gnosticism, gave substance to my psychology.” [43] The value of having access to alchemical symbols for depth-psychology is that they provide uncontaminated images from the objective psyche from which to study dreams and other products of the unconscious. In other words, they allow amplification of dreams on an objective basis. Given that Jung had no theory of dreams except that they tell one the truth of the psyche as it is without any prescriptions on how to live, these images from alchemy are invaluable indicators. In both the case of alchemy and Jungian depth-psychology, there are no prescriptive programs or rituals on how to live. The great value of alchemy as a precursor to depth-psychology is that the images were generally not contaminated by cultural or religious traditions and systematized ritual practice as is the case in other archetypal material, for instance in religions including Christianity, later Tantra and alchemy as well, Fairy Tales and Mythology. In Jung’s late summation of the meaning of alchemy, he wrote “the entire alchemical procedure ….could just as well represent the individuation process of a single individual, though with the not unimportant difference that no single individual ever attains to the richness and scope of the alchemical symbolism.” [44]

According to Zosimos, one of the early Greek alchemists and representative bridge between Gnosticism and alchemy, alchemy is “founded on the creation of the world,” which can be understood as the creation of consciousness. [45] Spiritual alchemy focused on the divinity of nature and the need for the spirit to be incarnated in matter, spiritualizing the body and materializing the spirit. For this reason the symbol for the goal was often taken to be the lapis philosoforum, the philosopher’s stone, where the [subtle] physical side was as important as the spiritual side. Amongst the Christian alchemists, it was often referred to as the resurrected body of Christ.

Emphasis for the spiritual alchemists was placed on the imaginatio vera, the true imagination, and the subtle process of transformation depicted there was spiritual not physical healing per se. The transformation of lead into gold was understood to be a subtle imaginative process, where gold was not the common gold [aurum non vulgi] and the transformative process involved a purification of one’s nature. From 900 CE there was an influence on alchemy from Neoplatonism, which had a philosophizing effect, emphasizing Logos and systemization departing from mother earth, magico-ritual experimentation and the conviction that inorganic matter was animated with a soul, the anima mundi, which alchemists could influence through contact with their own soul.

According to MP Pandit, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother with Tantric leanings, “the Tantrik’s alchemy crossed the ocean and reached Europe…” [46] In 1938 and 1939, Jung gave a series of lectures on the Buddhist Shri–Chakra–Sambhāra Tantra texts and showed a parallel sequence of symbols in alchemy. Along with Greek natural philosophy, Egyptian science and the Gnostic Hermetic traditions, Tantra and Chinese alchemy, by way of Arabic alchemy, which began around 850 CE, was a later important factor in determining the nature of Western alchemy. In this light it is interesting to note that one of the most significant influences on Western alchemy came from Muhammad ibn Umail, an Arabian alchemist, referred to as Senior amongst the Western alchemists. He was affected by Neoplatonism but much more so the Greek Gnostic Hermetic tradition, which flourished from 100 CE to 1000 CE. He was of great interest to Jung, who often referred to him in his alchemical writings, and to Marie Louise von Franz, who did some original research on one of his works known as HALL AR-RUMUS (‘Clearing of Enigmas’) prior to her passing away.

There is a contemporary Indian connection to the Arabian alchemist, as a large body of ibn Umail’s alchemical manuscripts is reported to exist in the Hyderabad Library. With considerable difficulty one of von Franz’s students, Theodore Abt, was able to get some photocopies of a few of his manuscripts. Due to reticence on the part of the Library officials, it was something of a hero’s quest to obtain them, as they are important to understanding the evolution of Western alchemy, linking as they do Gnostic Hermetic Greek alchemy and mystical Latin alchemy in Europe.

The birth of Western alchemy dates back to the meeting of Greek thought and its scientific accuracy with Egyptian recipes and religious beliefs in Ptolemaic Egypt The secret of Alchemy, according to Egyptian beliefs, was transmitted to Isis by the angel Amnaël. An initial root influence on Western Alchemy was the Egyptian embalming ritual that was connected to the mysteries of Isis. In their ritual the corpse was bathed in natron, a word derived from the Egyptian n-t-r, meaning god. This led to the deification and immortalization of the corpse and its eventual resurrection. In ancient Egypt this ritual process only referred to the king, the manifestation of the sun god, although later it was democratized to include everybody.

At any rate, the original basic theme of Western alchemy was probably based on the archetypal motif of the immortalization of the king. The second basic theme in European alchemy was that of the Coniunctio that came from Arabic alchemy, which, in turn, was influenced by Indian Tantra. The two important aspects of the Coniunctio theme, according to Jung, are the harmonious relationship between the conscious and unconscious and harmony between the male and female sexes, both of which require Eros in addition to Logos. Thus, it is not surprising to learn that Spanish alchemy penetrated the Grail tradition, and encouraged its interest in Eros and harmony between the sexes to compensate for a Logos oriented Christian culture. The two fundamental themes of mystical alchemy, then, the immortality of man and the Coniunctio motif, reflect the mystical union of the human individual with the male God and Feminine Nature.

The alchemists projected the archetypes of the objective psyche into matter, with the underlying belief that matter had a soul and psychic attributes. As I alluded to above the divinity of matter became progressively lost until alchemy turned into chemistry and inorganic matter became perceived as dead. Matter was no longer related to with the requirement to adjust one’s attitude in a propitiatory way according to need, but became acted upon and manipulated. This, as we all know, has led to extraordinary technological virtuosity that continues apace right up to the present day, with a concomitant paucity of relatedness to Mother earth. According to Jung’s hypothesis of a unus mundus or unitary world the objective psyche and inorganic matter are intrapsychically related. Based on his study of synchronistic experiences, he reasoned that from the outside the unus mundus is matter and from the inside, it is the collective unconscious, and that inorganic matter has some kind of vague consciousness.

The Mother’s yoga of the cells gave direct evidence of the living truth of consciousness in matter. In 1963 she described physical consciousness as a kind of tactile vision that is the “Thing AS IT IS, IT’S THAT,” when liberated from any mental influence. “And it’s so clear!” she is reported to have said. [47] In 1965-71 the Mother indicated that a new power was being organized from below, so that moving, walking, etc will be initiated from the material mind, and not from messages from a higher consciousness. By becoming conscious of her new supramentalized body on the subtle physical plane, she solved the problem posed by alchemy on the relationship between spirit and matter.

In 1939, when Jung was 64, while giving a seminar on the spiritual exercises of Ignatius Loyola, he was awoken one night to a wonderful vision of “the figure of Christ on the Cross,” “bathed in a bright light” at the foot of his bed.” [48] He was shaken by the image, which was very distinct and “the body made of greenish gold.” [49] Loyola’s spiritual exercises are based on an austere discipline where extraneous fantasy outside of the prescribed program is disavowed and rejected—therefore quite opposite from Jung’s active imagination which encourages the With this dream, Jung realized that he needed to add to his reflections the analogy of Christ with the philosopher’s gold and the benedicta viriditas-blessed greenness of the alchemists. [50] The green gold, wrote Jung… “is an expression of the life-spirit, the anima mundi or filius macrocosmi, the Anthropos who animates the whole cosmos. This spirit has poured himself out into everything, even into inorganic matter: he is present in metal and stone.” [51]

Amongst the alchemists the figure Mercurius was praised as the blessed greenness; he was an important alchemical figure that stood in compensatory relationship to the one-sided light figure of Christ. He was described as a dark and the hidden god, the son of the macrocosm and Mother Nature, and yet as “shining bright and burning hot, heavier than metal and lighter than air.” [52] Mercurius was depicted as a complex of opposites, which carried the projections of an objective spirit, which today Jungian depth-psychology calls the collective unconscious. Given that the alchemists projected the extreme opposites of the archetypal psyche into matter, he was, according to Jung, “the most appropriate symbol for matter.” [53] The alchemists depicted Mercurius as duplex and a two-faced god who comes as the lumen naturae or light of nature to those who aspire for truth but, otherwise, he turns into the seductive beckoning of Lucifer. In 1971, the Mother described her bodily state as consisting of two extremes, “a marvellous state and a general disintegration,” indicative of how wide apart was her experience of the opposites of matter in her yoga of the supramental transformation of the cells. [54] The foregoing amplifications support Marie-Louise von Franz’s interpretation of Jung’s vision as combining “the Christ-image with the figure of Mercurius into a unity,” thus unifying spirit and matter. [55] This refers to the concretization of the spirit and the spiritualization of the body, at least the subtle body, which was a desired goal for the mystical alchemists.

Jung turned to alchemy for symbolism and understanding of the nature of the transference/counter-transference in love relationships between men and women that he wrote about in an essay entitled The Psychology of the Transference. He brought a unique perspective, which fully accepts the value of human love while showing how, psychologically, it can be transformed into love for the Divine. Transference refers to a series of projections by one party and counter-transference to a series of responding projections from the other party in a relationship. Jung was particularly concerned about this phenomenon in that love problems are frequently, although not necessarily, the starting point for the individuation process. He differentiated four (4) levels of human love based on recognized psychological dynamics.

He referred to the first level of love in a relationship as archaic identity or participation mystique. This is the stage of romantic love and enmeshment, where individuals perceive their counterpart as fulfilling all their ideals concerning a love partner. As inevitably turns out to be the case, the mutual fascination between the two people in love is the result of a projection of the anima on the part of the man and the animus on the part of the woman that is eventually seen as a mistake. This leads to the second level of love, where the projections are worked upon and understood. Since all humans are half-good and half-shadow, there is a need to come to terms with the coercive power drive in each party, which requires acts of discernment and the capacity to make moral decisions based on self-reflection. This leads to stage three, where there is both love and understanding, in particular of one’s own soul; for men the anima, for women the animus. Love then induces the full integration of the anima/animus, which becomes a bridge to the Self and wholeness. Only at this point is there a real relationship where the power game is rejected and each party relates to the other as a fully equal human being.

Such a relationship can potentially evolve into the fourth level of human love, where there is, according to Jung, “the eternal connection through fate.” [56] In this case, there is no longer a question of love transmitted through the veil of transference, but love becomes an experience of “the Self, inner wholeness and relationship to God.” [57] Jung wrote of this aspect of love: “it is no ordinary friendship or sympathy it is more primitive, more primeval and more spiritual than anything we can describe.”… “it means many, including yourself and anybody whose heart you touch. There is no distance but immediate presence. It is an eternal secret.” [58] The central secret “hidden behind the attraction of emotional relationships,” and mutual individuation, wrote Jung, is “objective cognition,” the realization of which is essential in order that “the real coniunctio”” or mystical union is possible.” [59] This stage of human love is exceedingly rare, witness to which can only be found in such spiritual paths as Hindu Bhakti, Islamic spiritual Eros, Tantra and mystical alchemy.

Jung has the great merit of having developed a system of psychology taking the Western mind and its historical development for what it is, including its less developed spiritual awareness. For this reason he brought healing balm, still little recognized, to the Western, modern and post-modern minds. Alchemy is foundational for Jung’s depth psychology, and provides outstanding material for amplifying the nature of the objective psyche and individual dreams. It also brings Eros and feeling values and ultimately love, as well as relatedness to the earth and depth of being, compensation for the Western one-sided spiritual and intellectual tendencies directed towards Logos discernment. But that is not all there is to his approach to psychology, which also comes to terms with the nature of the modern and postmodern minds, where even the value of Logos is devalued and little understood. Jung’s thought and the practice of psychology he put forth are nothing less than an extraordinary synthesis of the Western tradition and relationship to the East, especially Indian yoga and Chinese alchemy. His work filled in a dark hole in the Western soul and promoted the individuation of humankind.

Sri Aurobindo alleged that “Veda and Vedanta are one side of the One Truth; Tantra with its emphasis on Shakti is another.” [60] He went on to clarify his position, stating: “Vedanta deals more with the principles and essentials of divine knowledge…” and “Tantra deals more with forms and processes and organized powers.” [61] Integral Yoga, he argued, takes up the essence of the truths systematized in these approaches, and carries them to “the fullest and highest significance.” [62] Ascent and descent of consciousness and other Tantric knowledge are relevant to the process of transformation in Integral Yoga as is the knowledge that surrender to the Mother is of central importance.

Although not as full and as high, or as spiritually differentiated, one could argue that a similar dynamic is there with Jung’s system of psychology developed within the Western tradition with influences from the East. There are for Jung, as with Sri Aurobindo, two sides to truth, Logos and Eros. Jung’s search for the principles and essentials of divine knowledge, Logos, took him through pre-Christian Western mythology, religion and religious thought, Christianity, Christian and Jewish mysticism, and Gnosticism as well as relevant eastern thought, including the Upanishads, where he found a parallel to his discovery of the immanent Self. As far as Eros is concerned he found historical support in alchemy and the Grail tradition. For the divinity in nature along with the transformation involved in the ascent descent of consciousness, he turned to alchemy. Most importantly Jung fully served the psyche, which is another way of saying that he consciously surrendered to the unconscious as the Mother of all consciousness. In other words, he surrendered to the Para-Shakti.

Research

The kind of empirical research engaged in by Jung was primarily subjective and in-depth phenomenological which, in fact, given the nature of the archetypal psyche, is far more complete and potentially objective than research using the so-called objective standards of Newtonian natural science. Scientific evaluation in Jung’s model includes not only external observation and logical thinking, but the total conscious personality, with the two attitudes, extraversion and introversion and all four functions of consciousness, thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition all potentially consciousness in the observer. It also fully acknowledges cultural subjectivity and any other potential bias due to the simple fact of limited human consciousness. Importance is also given to a creative relationship to the unconscious and openness to hidden knowledge not otherwise assessable to the conscious ego. Jung’s approach to research is in perfect harmony with that of quantum mechanics and relativity theory in contemporary physics, where it is recognized that subjective interaction with the observer and the observed must be taken into consideration in understanding the physical universe and the atom.

His scientific approach to psychology is also fully in harmony with Sri Aurobindo’s appeal for a complete psychological science, which he defined “as being a “compound of science with a metaphysical knowledge,” and where he defined psychology as “the science of consciousness and its states and operations in nature…” [63] Jungian psychology is based on the science of consciousness in relationship with experience; it is empirical with a metaphysical position based on empirical findings. In contemporary psychology in the West, in contrast, research methodology is primarily statistical based on external empirical experiments and evidence. Although the “objective” statistical causal approach may have its place in psychological research, it needs to be integrated into larger research methodology that involves the subjective dimension of life.

Jung’s model includes the principle of synchronicity, which is essentially acausal without denying the causal dimension, while focusing on each individual’s uniqueness, the qualitative value of time and the teleological or purposive nature of life. His research approach is in full agreement with Sri Aurobindo’s observation that “...error and delusion and the introduction of personality and one’s subjectivity into the pursuit of knowledge are always present and the physical or objective standards and methods do not exclude them,” and his mandate that “subjective discovery must be pursued by a subjective method of enquiry, observation, and verification; research into supraphysical must evolve, accept and test an appropriate means and methods other than those by which one examines constituents of physical objects and the process of Energy in material Nature.” [64] Following Sri Aurobindo, Prof Sen encouraged psychological research that is primarily subjective that not only takes into consideration individual subjective psychological development that is “teleologically and purposively” directed, but the emergence of the psychic being, where “the quality of uniqueness get[s] its full play.” [65]

The immense relevance of Prof Sen’s observation for research is evident in the fact that the psychic being is the individual evolutionary principle and central harmonizing and integrating factor of all aspects of the psyche. It is the incarnated aspect of the Self, link to truth of being, and knows through feeling. Its importance for the practitioner of Integral Yoga is made clear by Sri Aurobindo, when he observed that: “Everything is dangerous in the sadhana or can be, except the psychic change.” [66] For this reason he and the Mother counseled their sadhaks to bring the psychic being forward as the primary governor of life. In fact, in Jung as with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, there is both an immanent and incarnated aspect of the Self as well as a transcendent aspect.

Prof Sen acknowledged the central influence of the immanent Self in Jungian psychology, as well as its harmonizing and integrating role in reference to the above quote by Jung on the nature of the Self and its dynamic workings, where he likened the centre of personality to a magnet that draws disparate aspects of the psyche together like a crystal grating. Reflecting on Jung’s observations, Sen wrote: “The parallelism between the psychic being and the centre of Jung’s centre of being is most interesting.” Even their functions, he asserted, “are broadly the same.” [67] It is a well established fact that, in a genuine approach to Jungian therapy, being subjected to the active influence of the immanent Self is the sine qua non for any in-depth healing and the process of individuation. It is, in fact, the central importance that Jung gave to the Heart-Self that distinguishes his understanding of the nature of healing and path of individuation from all other approaches to Western psychology. Given its relevance for Integral Yoga, defining the nature of the immanent Self, or psychic being, its phenomenological workings in individuals over time and focusing research on this phenomena is therefore of paramount importance.

My observations above on Jung’s interest in alchemy and its application in the contemporary context, as well as his concern about both Eros and Logos, suggest other areas of research. There are two principle aspects to the individuation process and yoga. One is one’s conscious attitude, values and practice, the other is the response of the unconscious through dreams, and other products from the unconscious. Research can profitably take into consideration both aspects. It also needs to begin with parameters that discriminate people’s origins, in a broad perspective, Westerners and Indians, but more finely tuned differentiation as well. The parameters for such research could be defined by alleged commonality and differences between Integral Yoga and Jung’s approach to psychology, both in theory and practice, as well as consideration of the different cultural and spiritual history and traditions of Indians, Westerners and others.

Jung’s system of psychology has considerable merit and, as I have argued throughout these papers, I believe that it is compatible, although not as far reaching, as the integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Their compatibility suggests that the practice of Jungian therapy or involvement in his individuation process, do not have to be a deflection from the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. There is also, I believe, the potential for a fertile field of psychological research involving practitioners of either path as well as those who believe they are profiting from both teachings.

References

[41] CG Jung (1959), Modern Psychology, Vol. 3 and Vol. 4, Notes on Lectures given at the Eidgenossiche Technische Hochschule, October 1938–March 1940, Vol. 4, pp. 129, 192, passim

[42] Ibid., p. 14

[43] CG Jung (1965), Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Recorded and Edited by Aniela Jaffé, Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston, p. 205

[44] Edward F Edinger (1985), Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, p. 2

[45] Ibid., p. 8

[46] MP Pandit (1967), Studies in Tantra and the Veda, p. 9

[47] Satprem (1982) The Mind of the Cells: or willed Mutation of our Species, Translated from the French by Francine Mahak & Luc Venet, p. 49

[48] Marie-Louise von Franz (1975), CG Jung: His Myth in our Times, Translated from the German by William H Kennedy, p. 210

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid., p. 211

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid., p. 212

[53] Ibid., p. 210

[54] Satprem (1982) The Mind of the Cells: or willed Mutation of our Species, Translated from the French by Francine Mahak & Luc Venet, p. 187

[55] Marie-Louise von Franz (1975), CG Jung: His Myth in our Times, Translated from the German by William H Kennedy, p. 211

[56] Marie-Louise von Franz (1999), Muhammad ibn Umail’s Hall ar-Rumuz (Clearing of Enigmas), Egg, Switzerland: Fotorotar AG, p. 44

[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid., pp. 44-45

[59] Ibid. p. 49

[60] MP Pandit (1972), Sri Aurobindo on Tantra, p. 39

[61] Ibid.

[62] Ibid.

[63] Sri Aurobindo (1978), Glossary of Terms in Sri Aurobindo’s Writings, p. 124

[64] Sri Aurobindo (1970a), SABCL, The Life Divine, p. 650

[65] Indra Sen (1986), Integral Psychology: The Psychological System of Sri Aurobindo, pp. 177, 179

[66] Sri Aurobindo (1970b), SABCL, Letters on Yoga, Vol. 24, p. 1095

[67] Indra Sen (1986), Integral Psychology: The Psychological System of Sri Aurobindo, p. 183

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Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by paulette on Sat 01 May 2010 09:44 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

I have myself extensively quoted from Indra Sen and acknowledged the role he played in divulgating the “integral psychology” of Sri Aurobindo, who endorsed Sen’s usage of this term. However, Jung would be surprised at such an emphasis on the psychic being regarding his person; in-depth studies on Jung’s life and family life show quite a different picture. Apropos his first extramarital relationship, widely acknowledged as being sexual, with Sabine Spielrein – from 1906 to 1909 a female patient under Jung’s care as he diagnosed her for “psychotic hysteria”, at the Burghölzli Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Zurich – Robert C. Smith writes [“The Wounded Jung: Effects of Jung’s Relationships on His Life and Work”, ch. 5, “The Lost Feminine: Jung’s Relationships with Women”, p.84]:

“Much discussion in the psychotherapeutic community has ensued about Jung’s behavior, which he himself later stated was foolish and unjustified. Even Jung described himself as a scoundrel and a knave.” The woman, who among others “had a recurrent fantasy of bearing his son”, was twenty – and he, a married man and well established practitioner, thirty-one. Jung wrote to her forty-six letters – and she, twelve. Smith further observed, mentioning Sabine “The pattern of projection that he was to repeat with so many other women in his life…”, and “Through her he first discovered his ‘polygamous components’”.

Jung wrote, in a letter to Freud dated January 30, 1910, “The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the license to be unfaithful” (McGuire, 1974, p. 289). The records in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, published in 1961, shows that Jung recognized the voice that spoke to him in the form of his anima as that of a patient, “a talented psychopath who had a strong transference to me” (p. 185). It is commonly agreed that the “talented psychopath” was his lover Sabine Spielrein, whose transference on Jung was reciprocated by his equally strong countertransference. “A case of colossal medical malpractice” Smith also quotes. This is how the anima business truly commenced, and the Jungian practice of the transference-countertransference (Freud rejected it as pathological) – before Jung turned to his super-anima Toni Wolff. But I better stop here.

No psychic being, please! No hagiography! No projections! Let’s accept Jung as he evaluates himself.

Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by paulette on Sat 01 May 2010 10:08 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

Johnston writes: “…recognizing the central value of the psychic being in Jung’s approach to healing and the process of individuation. I then show how Jung not only had experiential knowledge of the psychic being or central Self, but that it is an integral aspect of his approach to psychology.” And so on, this is a recurring theme in Johnston’s writings.

First of all, in Integral Yoga the central being is the Jivatman, not to be confused with the psychic being. Secondly, to speak on psychic being is sacrilegious, in the light of the unending suffering that Jung caused to his wife and five children, whom he met only on Sundays, at lunchtime, but imposing on them the presence of his new “anima-woman” Toni Wollf; she too an ex patient who had substituted Sabine Spielrein as Jung’s new “anima”, and whom he called his “second wife”. Even in public, at conferences and symposiums, Jung was currently seen with both women – his legal wife Emma, and his “anima” and “second wife”, sitting at his left and right side. The story went on for decades, until the lady was replaced with Marie Louise von Frantz. And there is Jung’s initial openness and involvement with the Nazi movement and institutions; plus, on top, Jung’s intimate connection, until death, with the grand Nazi occultist Miguel Serrano.

Jung must be evaluated for his theory, where facing one’s shadow is the very starting point of the journey, and there is no end – for there can’t be any: the Mother stated that the shadow will disappear only by acquiring the supramental consciousness. An adult, mature, responsible approach to Jung demands accepting that to come up with such a monumental assessment of the human psyche he had to go himself through everything, in order to know first hand what he was talking about and sort it out, within himself; in doing so opening the way to others as well. Jung pointed out the way, in psychology, in the same manner that in yoga a guru points out the way to the disciples; yet the distinction remains: psychology (and psychiatry – Jung had a special interest in schizophrenia, contrarily to Freud who dealt mainly with neurotic patients) is not yoga, the methods and goals do not overlap.

The unbearable layers of make-up that Johnston puts on Jung, presenting a white ghost instead of the black and white man he was, with his heights and his abyss, reminds me, on a human scale, of an observation Sri Aurobindo made in “Essays on the Gita”, p.142, apropos the avatar and imperfect human nature: “to the thoroughgoing dualist who sees an unbridgeable gulf between the human and the divine nature, it sounds like a blasphemy”.

Next, the Jungian self.

Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by paulette on Sun 02 May 2010 06:32 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

I tried to fit the Jungian self into the mould of the psychic being and I ended up with a headache. It is an impossible task, as trying to constrict a broad object into a narrow mould. The Jungian self has a specificity of its own, its grandeur ought not be confused with anything else. However, if one insists finding similarities with yoga/Integral Yoga, the numinosity, incommunicability, incommensurability of the Jungian self evokes the latter’s central being/Jivatman. This is not incompatible with the prominently non-psychic nature of Jung and his pattern of life. It is also not incompatible with the borderline, Russian roulette extreme experiences that are the trademark of Jung’s personal path; the psychic being doesn’t fit, as it is the case with those pushing too one-sidedly the ‘spiritual’ experience – because of a spiritual ego, or simply because the psychic being has not been enabled to hold the reins. Dismemberment, and eventually a true psychosis (which Sri Aurobindo, in yoga, calls possession), occur when the insignificant role to which the psychic being has been relegated fails to ensure the much needed protection. Didn’t Sri Aurobindo say that everything in yoga is dangerous but the psychic being?

David Johnston, like so many Aurobindonians, with all his talking on the psychic being tends to eschew the second realization and transformation of Integral yoga: the spiritual one, that of yoga, of all paths of yoga. Self-realisation: this only is YOGA – or there is none. Conversely, the very interest that Jung had for the Upanishads points to the Vedantin and even Advaitin self, not the psychic being. The following excerpt from a letter by Jung takes us a little closer. It was written to A.U. Vasavada on November 22, 1954. Vasavada had training and analysis at the Jung Institute in Zurich, then returned to India where he practiced Jungian psychology. He followed a Shakti path with worship of the Divine Mother.

“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 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 the self, but that 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. What does the grain know of the whole mountain though it is a part of it? ... You should not mix up your own enlightenment with the self-revelation of the self. When you recognize yourself, you have not necessarily recognized the self but only an infinitesimal part of it, though the self has given you the light… Your standpoint seems to coincide with our medieval mystics, who tried to dissolve themselves in God. You all seem to be interested in how to get back to the self, instead of looking for what the self wants you to do in the world, where – for the time being at least – we are located, presumably for a certain purpose. The universe does not seem to exist for the sole purpose of man denying or escaping it… In order to get rid of the opposites I must meet them first, but this leads away from the self. I must also learn how the opposites can be united, and not how they can be avoided. As long as I am on the first part of the road I need to forget the self in order to get properly into the mill of the opposites, otherwise I live only fragmentarily and conditionally. When it was my origin I did not know myself, and when I did learn about myself, I did not know the self. I have to discover it first in my actions, where first it appears under strange masks. That is the reason I must study symbolism, otherwise I risk not knowing my own father and mother when I meet them again after many years of my absence.”

Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by David on Tue 04 May 2010 02:12 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

RESPONSE TO PAULETTE HADNAGY[1]
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
“All pure and lovely things
Wend to the Pure.”
(Promise) A.E. (George Russell)

“Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues
(Love Labours Lost) Sheakespeare”

I had originally decided not to reply to Paulette’s comments as I know too well the danger of getting embroiled in a nasty exchange, as my point of view on Jung is clearly very different from hers. In Jungian psychology, when this heated exchange takes place between men and women [which I will try and do my part to avoid], it is referred to as the “anima/animus” conflict. Although Paulette claims to know my position on Jung by heart, I cannot say that it is, on my part, reciprocated. I am, in fact, surprised to learn of the intensity and depth of her feelings about Jung and my interpretation of Jung, which I can only relate to as antagonistic and destructive.

I have changed my mind about responding to her opinions and will endeavor to go through her comments and respond to them systematically in a series of comments. I begin with the following statement, which, as far as I am concerned, precludes the possibility of having any decent and open discussion with her. “The pursuit of Jung’s Analytical Psychology provides an ideal platform from where to commence the journey; but a moment comes when one must stretch beyond, or it becomes a hindrance. When I discovered Jung, in 1976, I was about to give up Sri Aurobindo to pursue only Jung; but ten years later I discovered that my self-made Jungian synthesis, and my over-emphasising the anima’s role and its fourfold aspects in particular, had lead me to an impasse. I had to choose: Jung – versus Integral Yoga. I choose Integral Yoga, having no choice. My svadharma was to get rid of even this crutch and soar, alone, into the unknown.” In her winged flight, Paulette is indirectly claiming to have an authoritative perspective that takes her beyond Jung and his psychology and, naturally, anybody else who presents themselves as representing Jung or his system of psychology. So I write these comments not to enter into a dialogue with her, but for the sake of other interested members of the Blog.

To begin with, may I remind the reader that Paulette’s point of view has changed radically since 2008 as I pointed out in my essay entitled Jung and the Psychic Being, which I have already posted to the Blog. At least that earlier, although still very recent position, does not seem to satisfy her agenda at the moment. I have also already responded to her comments here on “the anima’s role and its fourfold aspect” in my essay now on the Blog, entitled: Jung’s Four Functions of Consciousness and Sri Aurobindo’s Soul-Type and the Fourfold Personality. Instead of being so concerned about the anima, a woman is normally better served by looking at the role of the shadow and animus and in her life. Had Paulette done so, she might not have attained to such an impasse. It is typically the man’s concern to look at and assimilate the anima and shadow in his life.

Paulette is no doubt fulfilling her svadharma and cannot be blamed for that. Nonetheless, I feel a need to note that there is a great difference between a person’s integral truth of being and focusing attention on that person’s so-called dark side. That seems to be Paulette’s principal concern, as if to say there is a good side and a shadow side, each of which needs equal air time. This amounts to encouraging unconsciousness and ignorance. The really pertinent question is what aspect of the shadow and anima/animus have been assimilated to conscious and therefore transformed. In Jung’s case, it is fair to say, there was a great deal of assimilation and transformation of the shadow and anima over his lifetime.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by paulette on Tue 04 May 2010 10:37 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

The reason why I am not commenting in detail on David’s postings is that I don’t even have the time to read them, besides feeling discouraged at his obstinacy and deliberate concealing the truth on Jung’s personal life. Indra Sen died 16 years ago, at the age of 91, having spent the last years in an Ashram Guest House. I suppose that his ultimate preoccupation was not browsing the internet (which, by the way, those years was not so overwhelmingly informative as it is now). Moreover, I guess that Sen’s closeness to Sri Aurobindo was not so conducive either in reading how wounded Jung was since the beginning because of his parents, and how deeply this affected him for life — making his wife and children pay an exorbitant price and all that ensued. Furthermore, taking into account that Sen mentions only once the evil persona, and as a peripheral remark only, and his interest in the shadow is also not prominent.

Had Sen found out about Jung’s searching for the ‘anima’ in his female patients and his professed polygamy, I expect that the ashramite would have concluded that the psychic being cannot be part of such things, although undeniably Jung is a victim of his childhood situation and this was the outcome. Personally, my reaction is compassion: towards his wife and children, but ultimately also towards Jung. As the illustrious psychiatrist Arthur Janov stated regarding his primal scream therapy, an adult cannot give what as a child he did not receive. This is alas a widespread curse; Jung too fell victim of it and transmitted it to his family, as millions of people all over the planet do – psychologists and psychiatrists included.

It is in the light of this awareness that I go through a certain type of material downoloaded from the internet, in reply to David’s inconsiderate assertions. This is from the Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Wolff

“Toni (Antonia Anna) Wolff (18 September 1888 – 21 March 1953), was a patient and later a student and lover of Carl Jung. Wolff later became a Jungian analyst. Her extramarital relationship with Jung was openly enacted through a course of ten years. Jung had been looking for the "Anima woman", eventually coming to call Toni his "second wife", his legal wife being Emma Jung.”

This second extract comes from highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/.../284309/Chapter_04_Jung.doc

Did Carl Jung Wish for the Death of His Wife
File Format: Microsoft Word - View as HTML
In a letter to Freud dated January 30, 1910, Jung wrote: "The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the license to be unfaithful" (McGuire, ...

““[…] After Jung described the dream, Freud became interested in the two skulls in the cave, but not as collective unconscious material. Instead, he insisted that Jung associate them to some wish. Who did Jung wish dead? Not yet completely trusting his own judgment, Jung answered, "'My wife and my sister-in-law'—after all, I had to name someone whose death was worth the wishing!
"I was newly married at the time and knew perfectly well that there was nothing within myself which pointed to such wishes" (Jung, 1961, pp. 159-160).
Although Jung's interpretation of this dream may be more accurate than Freud's, it is quite possible that Jung did indeed wish for the death of his wife. At that time (1909), Jung was not "newly married" but had been married for nearly 7 years, and for the past 5 of those years he was deeply involved in a sexual relationship with a former patient named Sabina Spielrein. Frank McLynn (1996) has alleged that Jung was a notorious womanizer who frequently had affairs with his patients and former patients. He claimed that Jung's "mother complex" caused him to harbor animosity toward his wife while destining him to a life of promiscuity. McLynn, who is extremely antagonistic toward Jung, may have exaggerated Jung's promiscuity, but little doubt exists that Jung had several extramarital affairs. In a letter to Freud dated January 30, 1910, Jung wrote: "The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the license to be unfaithful" (McGuire, 1974, p. 289).
Spielrein had begun her association with Jung as his patient, but the relationship soon turned into a sexual one. In spite of this sexual relationship, Jung continued to analyze Spielrein and eventually conducted a training analysis that enabled her to become a psychoanalyst. John Kerr (1993) has argued effectively that the feminine voice that spoke to Jung in the form of his anima was that of Spielrein. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung (1961) wrote that he recognized the voice as that of a patient, " a talented psychopath who had a strong transference to me" (p. 185). If Spielrein had a strong transference to Jung, then he reciprocated with a strong countertransference to her.
Spielrein may have been the first female patient that Jung took as a lover, but she was not the last. The most visible of all Jung's affairs was with Antonia (Toni) Wolff, a dark-eyed beauty who first met Jung in 1910 when she was 22 years old. Like Sabina Spielrein, Wolff began her association with Jung as a patient, became his lover, received a training analysis, and became an analyst. When Jung descended into the depths of his unconscious after his break with Freud, it was Toni Wolff, not Emma Jung, who helped him retain his sanity and eventually emerge from that dangerous journey. Jung became so deeply dependent on Wolff that he pressured his wife to allow him to openly carry on his affair with Toni. Emma reluctantly and unhappily agreed. McLynn paints a picture of Emma, Carl, and Toni in a menage à trois, but such was not the case. Alan Elms's (1994) description of this relationship is probably more accurate. According to Elms, Jung spent Wednesday evenings with Toni, and Toni cane to the Jung household for Sunday dinner with Carl, Emma, and the children, who were no more pleased than their mother over this arrangement.
Jung and Wolff continued their affair for at least 2 decades and made no attempt to hide the relationship. Nevertheless, the name Toni Wolff does not appear in Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Elms discovered that Jung had written a whole chapter on Toni Wolff, a chapter that was never published. The absence of Toni's name in Jung's autobiography is probably due to the hatred of Jung's children for Wolff. They remembered when she had carried on openly with their father, and they harbored some lifelong resentment toward her. As adults with some veto power over what appeared in their father's posthumously published autobiography, they were not in a generous mood to perpetuate knowledge of the affair.”

To attribute me moralistic judgments and condemnation is one more projection – on my side there is only compassion, for Jung, for everybody. But to insist on the psychic being, overmind and supermind regarding Jung is a projection due to personal matters, and I don’t accept to be slammed for the sake of such projection, persistently bestowed on an aurobindonian forum.

In 2010 anyone can access the internet and download most detailed information. Not just through articles, but even through widely read books on Jung, where his life is analyzed in details, and so is his theory, and the reasons for revising it (starting from the anima/animus) are expounded at length. I am deliberately not quoting from academicians like Mc Lynn or Noll, although I have their books, famous for their radical critique to Jung. I am quoting instead from moderates; anyone interested in such matters can read via internet, as I have done, extracts from well-known books such as:

The Wounded Jung: Effects of Jung's Relationships on His Life and Work (Psychosocial Issues) (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/Wounded-Jung-Effects-Relationships-Psychosocial/dp/081011576X
$ 29.95

Jung by Anthony Storr (Paperback)
6 new from $62.29
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=0415904110Books › 0415904110

Jung: A Biography (Hardcover)
by Deirdre Bair
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0316076651/ref=rdr_ext_uan

My daughter is coming at the end of the month with these books; then I will be able to scan extracts from them.

My love and gratitude for Jung remain unchanged, as unchanged are my views since when I published “Becoming One – The Psychology of Intyegral Yoga”; in the Appendix I presented Jung’s theory, but I took great care, deliberately, to avoid lucubrating on his life and personal path. I warned David that to insist on psychic being, overmind and supermind was the worst that could be done to Jung. For personal reasons David is casting his own projections on Jung, which anyone can undo simply by reading the overabundant literature on Jung, in books or via internet.

I have to present to the Auroville Working Committee and Council all the material I have come across on the Matrimandir during my 25 years in Auroville. I am also busy publishing two new compilations from Sri Aurobindo’s writings: one on the Avatar, the other gathering the autobiographical and political writings I have gathered for the Centenary Arrival exhibition, now at Savitri Bhavan. It is extremely painful that, instead of concentrating on my present work, I have to come at the rescue of Jung, to be freed from fantastic projections forcing me to unveil material that I never wished, nor there was any need within the context I had presented, to unveil.

Paulette

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by David on Tue 04 May 2010 10:55 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

RESPONSE TO PAULETTE HADNAGY [2]
In Tolkien’s charming tale of Farmer Giles of Ham, Farmer Giles took aim at a giant that was devastating his and other’s property, with a blunderbuss, stuffed with miscellaneous material. The shot was, accordingly, inaccurate, random and wildly scattered, and only caught the target as if by chance as it were. That, for me, is a fitting image for Paulette’s method of challenging Jung and Jungian psychology. Jung was a giant, to be sure, but he brought new wine for new bottles and a healing message to both individuals and society. I, in fact, find it difficult to relate to any sense of his having been destructive, so powerfully do I resonate to his message. However, I do understand how his psychology can be taken as a challenge to the status quo, either in one’s personal way of engaging life or in institutional culture, and how there could be a mighty defensive reaction as a consequence. That, at least, is one way of explaining the phenomena of the growing crowd of published books, where the authors self-righteously criticize Jung’s life and work. Some people seem to gravitate to the logic and point of view contained in these books, and Paulette seems to be one of them.
At any rate I now address a second challenge put forth by Hadnagy. She reasoned that, since Jung worked at the Burghölzi until he was 29, when he resigned for the sake of attending a large private practice that “it follows that the human material on which Jung researched and worked were psychiatric, neurotic, hysteric patients and the like, adding this cannot be discounted.” She further noted that he co-authored a book on hysteria with Bleuler. She went on to observe that “Jung also operated on patients undergoing severe crisis, including the type Jung called dismemberment, which may be confused with psychosis and schizophrenia at an early stage. This was Jung’s field of action and, according to Hadnagy, not some ashram. All this is very misleading as Jung’s principal life work involved individuation of both individuals and humankind and it does not follow logically that it should have been otherwise. He left Burghölzi as a relatively young man and his true vocation remained ahead of him.
As Hadnagy acknowledged in a subsequent comment on the Blog, Jung never co-authored a book on hysteria with Bleuler or with anybody else. Although he made some notable contributions to the study of schizophrenia and mental disease, his more important and sustaining life work was concerned with the individuation of both individuals and humankind. As far as a severe crisis Jung described as dismemberment is concerned, Jung never, to my knowledge, referred to a crisis condition called dismemberment as if it were a mental disease resembling the early stages of schizophrenia or a psychosis. Dismemberment is a well-recognized recurring aspect of the individuation process, where conscious attitudes and values are challenged by the Self, and where every experience of the Self harbors defeat for the ego. One finds symbolism of dismemberment in alchemy and in the shamanic journey as well as in myths depicting the dismemberment of a god or hero, such as Osiris, Zagreus or Orpheus. It depicts a stage where old values and attitudes need to be radically discarded in order for there to be a new integration of being organized around the psychic being and/or larger Self. In shamanic imagery of the journey, after shamans have been completely dismembered and split apart psychically, they are then reintegrated by the use of quartz or iron pieces. In this light, Hadnagy’s observation that, “In Jungian therapy dismemberment is not an infrequent occurrence. It can even happen repeatedly, and ideally prelude to an auto-adjustment crisis forerunning a positive leap forwards” is a kind of muddled half-light. It is not necessarily in Jungian therapy per se where it happens, but in the individuation process, wherever that transpires. Nor does it necessarily happen in every Jungian therapy. To characterize it “as ideally a prelude to an auto-adjustment crisis forerunning a positive leap forwards” is mixed-up statement that does not describe what actually takes place psychologically, in fact misrepresents it.
Jung was never the head of an ashram, but people gathered around him for analysis, seminars and eagerly read his books, all in order to gain from his wisdom. People were initiated by him into the individuation process, which parallels the Mother’s concern for individualization. The individuation process can lead to a far-reaching spiritual transformation of personality that Jung described in his opus, Mysterium Coniunctionis. Although he never headed an ashram, as that has not been the Western way, the Jung Institute grew up around him despite his protests, which, at least in part, played a similar role.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by paulette on Tue 04 May 2010 12:52 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

I don’t have the time now to verify if and where Jung equated dismemberment to schizophrenia in its initial stage, but it is a fact that the similarities are undeniable. More can be found in the writings of an outstanding Jungian psychiatrist Perry – also in terms of an eventual spiritual journey; and, regarding emergence/emergency, also in the many books of famous Stanislav Grof. Of course, not everybody needs to pass through dismemberment, thanks God, and it will never happen to those who embark on the spiritual journey under the safe shield of the psychic being!

And what it this – dissociating the process of individuation from Jungian therapy, or viceversa? Jungian therapy doesn’t mean compulsorily that one has to be psychotic or pre-psychotic to be eligible, but the fact that much of Jung’s findings come from such patients is undeniable. From the beginning Jung had an interest in schizophrenia; some of his most renowned books came to light thanks to Jung’s records about his schizophrenic patients. Jung himself thought being at the verge of psychosis, in the period Auroman has been referring to. From the notes I took from the famous book “Jung”, by Anthony Storr, [books.google.co.in/books?isbn=0415904110...], Ch 1 – “The personal background”:

“He also developed a deep distrust of women in general…” p.2. Then Storr observes that in schizophrenia the personality of the patients is fragmented, disintegrated – rather than merely dissociated. According to Jung among the fragments some ‘voices’ “could provide a certain continuity with which the therapist can establish a dialogue. … The patient’s ego may remain more or less intact, although invisible” and eventually reasserts its supremacy during a physical illness, and when this is over it disappears again. P.9
Freud never worked in a mental hospital for more than brief periods; he focussed on hysteria and obsessional neurosis. But from 1900 to 1909 Jung worked at the Burghölzi Clinic, and even afterwards “many of his patients continued to be either borderline psychotics or frankly schizophrenic. Indeed, judging from the paucity of case-histories in the voluminous corpus of Jung’s writings, he was not much interested in neurosis as such.” P.10
By the way, when Jung left the Burghölzi Clinic he was already 34. As for hysteria, I have already observed that this was rather the field of Breuer and Freud; nevertheless Jung diagnosed his first lover, Sabine Spielrein, as affected by psychotic hysteria. Jung’s first book was because of the mediumistic qualities of her cousin, who some Jungians regard as hysteric (and an eventual first lover).

Johnston seems busy trashing everybody (a manifest quality of the psychic being), including the famous Jungians I refer to, deliberately, because of their moderate approach – instead of bulldozing Jung by bluntly quoting Mc Lynn and Noll.

As for my shadow, David should rather examine what is at the basis of his untenable projections on Jung – to begin with, Jung’s “anima” searching through extramarital relationships with his patients, and the pathology of such process (as already pointed out by Freud) in the name of the Jungian transference/countertransference.

Paulette

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by paulette on Tue 04 May 2010 12:53 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

I don’t have the time now to verify if and where Jung equated dismemberment to schizophrenia in its initial stage, but it is a fact that the similarities are undeniable. More can be found in the writings of the outstanding Jungian psychiatrist Perry – also in terms of an eventual spiritual journey; and, regarding emergence/emergency, also in the many books of famous Stanislav Grof. Of course, not everybody needs to pass through dismemberment, thanks God, and it will never happen to those who embark on the spiritual journey under the safe shield of the psychic being!

And what it this – dissociating the process of individuation from Jungian therapy, or viceversa? Jungian therapy doesn’t mean compulsorily that one has to be psychotic or pre-psychotic to be eligible, but the fact that much of Jung’s findings come from such patients is undeniable. From the beginning Jung had an interest in schizophrenia; some of his most renowned books came to light thanks to Jung’s records about his schizophrenic patients. Jung himself thought being at the verge of psychosis, in the period Auroman has been referring to. From the notes I took from the famous book “Jung”, by Anthony Storr, [books.google.co.in/books?isbn=0415904110...], Ch 1 – “The personal background”:

“He also developed a deep distrust of women in general…” p.2. Then Storr observes that in schizophrenia the personality of the patients is fragmented, disintegrated – rather than merely dissociated. According to Jung among the fragments some ‘voices’ “could provide a certain continuity with which the therapist can establish a dialogue. … The patient’s ego may remain more or less intact, although invisible” and eventually reasserts its supremacy during a physical illness, and when this is over it disappears again. P.9
Freud never worked in a mental hospital for more than brief periods; he focussed on hysteria and obsessional neurosis. But from 1900 to 1909 Jung worked at the Burghölzi Clinic, and even afterwards “many of his patients continued to be either borderline psychotics or frankly schizophrenic. Indeed, judging from the paucity of case-histories in the voluminous corpus of Jung’s writings, he was not much interested in neurosis as such.” P.10

By the way, when Jung left the Burghölzi Clinic he was already 34. As for hysteria, I have already observed that this was rather the field of Breuer and Freud; nevertheless Jung diagnosed his first lover, Sabine Spielrein, as affected by psychotic hysteria. Jung’s first book was because of the mediumistic qualities of her cousin, who some Jungians regard as hysteric (and an eventual first lover).

Johnston seems busy trashing everybody (a manifest quality of the psychic being), including the famous Jungians I refer to, deliberately, because of their moderate approach – instead of bulldozing Jung by bluntly quoting Mc Lynn and Noll.

As for my shadow, David should rather examine what is at the basis of his untenable projections on Jung – to begin with, Jung’s “anima” searching through extramarital relationships with his patients, and the pathology of such process (as already pointed out by Freud) in the name of the Jungian transference/countertransference.

Paulette

Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by Vikas on Wed 05 May 2010 09:56 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

And there is Jung’s initial openness and involvement with the Nazi movement and institutions; plus, on top, Jung’s intimate connection, until death, with the grand Nazi occultist Miguel Serrano. - Paulette

I was intrigued by this. A cursory reading of Jung in the wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung)
reveals the contrary. I reproduce an extract from the relevant text

"There are writings that show that Jung's sympathies were against, rather than for, Nazism.[41] In his 1936 essay "Wotan", Jung described Germany as "infected" by "one man who is obviously 'possessed'...", and as "rolling towards perdition...".
This seems to me actually quite impressive, or it might be that the information on the net is apocryphal which is very possible.

Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by paulette on Wed 05 May 2010 10:23 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

Vikas,

What you quote from the Wikipedia is correct, but Jung wrote “Wotan” only in 1936. What strikes is Jung’s ambivalence; also, and partly, because of his atavistic fascination with the Volk movement, which served as Nazism’s incubator. In his book “Hitler and His God - The Background to the Nazi Phenomenon”, 2006, Georges Van Vrekhem has written at length on the Volk’s implications, also quoting from Noll (the Harvard academician who is the most severe critic of Jung). How did Jung relate to Nazism is a hot issue still widely debated (for pages and pages even in Google). Below is another excerpt on the topic:

Jung and Nazism
http://www.crystalinks.com/jung.html

“Though the field of psychoanalysis was dominated at the time by Jewish practitioners, and Jung had many friends and respected colleagues who were Jewish, a shadow hung over Jung's career due to allegations that he was a Nazi sympathizer. Jung was editor of the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie, a publication that eventually endorsed Mein Kampf as required reading for all psychoanalysts. Jung claimed this was done to save psychoanalysis and preserve it during the war, believing that psychoanalysis would not otherwise survive because the Nazis considered it to be a "Jewish science." He also claimed he did it with the help and support of his Jewish friends and colleagues.[12] This after-the-fact explanation, however, has been strongly challenged on the basis of available documents.[13] The question remains unresolved.

Jung also served as president of the Nazi-dominated International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy. One of his first acts as president was to modify the constitution so that German Jewish doctors could maintain their membership as individual members even though they were excluded from all German medical societies. Also, in 1934 when he presented his paper "A Review Of The Complex Theory," in his presidential address he did not discount the importance of Freud and credited him with as much influence as he could possibly give to an old mentor. Later in the war, Jung resigned. In addition, in 1943 he aided the Office of Strategic Services by analyzing Nazi leaders for the United States.[14]

However, it is still a topic of interest whether Jung's later explanations of his actions to save psychoanalysis from the Nazi Regime meant that he did not actually believe in Nazism himself.”

Other great personalities ended up sympathizing, eventually endorsing Nazism. Illustrious examples are the architect Le Corbusier, the philosopher Heidegger, the composer Orff and so on. But while the dispute on Jung’s attitude towards Nazism still goes on, what is particularly disconcerting is Jung’s closest relationship, at the end of his life, with the Nazi and occultist Miguel Serrano. This is one link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Serrano. Here are a few excerpts:

“Miguel Serrano (10 September 1917 – 28 February 2009) was a Chilean diplomat, explorer and author of poetry, books on spiritual questing and Esoteric Hitlerism. Serrano's forceful and anti-modernist neo-Gnostic philosophy claims to elucidate the extraterrestrial origin of the Hyperborean-descended Aryans, image-bearers of the godhead, and postulates a global conspiracy against them by an evil inferior godlet: the Demiurge, worshipped by the Jews, lord of planet Earth, spawner of the primitive hominid stocks, and author of all base materiality.

Serrano synthesizes the Hindu-Vedic and Nordic traditions, both of which he considers to be of ancient Aryan-Hyperborean provenance. He is especially indebted to the Jungian theory of collective racial archetypes and follows Savitri Devi in recognizing Adolf Hitler as an avatar who battled against the demonic materialistic hosts of the Kali Yuga.

[…] In late 1941, Serrano was introduced to a Chilean esoteric order founded by "F.K." (a German immigrant to Chile), which claimed allegiance to a mysterious and far-flung Brahmin elite centered in the Himalayas.[4] This mystico-martial order practiced ritual magic, tantric and kundalini yoga linked to Nietzschean concepts of the will to power and fascist activism. He was initiated into the order in February 1942.[4] Cult members regarded Adolf Hitler as a savior of the Indo-European or Aryan race. The order considered astral travel and higher states of awareness as the natural ancestral heritage of all pure-blooded ("twice-born") Aryans. The order's master described Hitler as an initiate, a being of boundless and unprecedented willpower (shudibudishvabhaba), a boddhisatva who had voluntarily incarnated on earth in order to overcome the Kali Yuga; he claimed to have been in astral contact with Hitler, not only during the war but also after it had ended, "sure evidence that he was alive and had survived the Berlin bunker".[4]

Convinced by these revelations, and prompted also by popular speculations as to Hitler's survival in Antarctica, Serrano accompanied the Chilean Army and Navy on their expedition to Antarctica in 1947-48 as a journalist.[5] The stark and lonely wastes of the polar region left a permanent impression on Serrano's mind. He made his first visit to Europe in 1951, still obsessed by the enigmatic figure of Hitler. Serrano visited and brooded over the ruins of the Berlin bunker, Spandau Prison and the ruins of Hitler's Berghof in Bavaria.[5] In Switzerland, he met and befriended Herman Hesse, the well-known, Nobel Prize-winning German Romantic writer, and C.G. Jung.[5] Jung's pre-war psychoanalysis of Hitler being a "spiritual vessel, a demi-divinity, a myth" and an embodiment of the "collective unconscious of his race"[6] greatly influenced Serrano's worldview. He and Jung passionately exchanged thoughts on the meaning of mythology and archetypes in the modern age of dehumanizing mass technocracy.[5] These encounters with Hesse and Jung culminated in Serrano's most famous and prestigious book, C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships.

[…] Serrano returned to Chile after the Pinochet coup in 1973. Finding the regime unsympathetic to his ideas, he adopted "the role of intellectual gadfly".[9] In May 1984, Serrano gave the Hitler salute at the funeral in Santiago of SS Colonel Walter Rauff.[9] He convened a rally in Santiago on 5 September 1993, in honor of Rudolf Hess and in memory of the 62 young Chilean Nazi supporters who were shot dead while occupying a social security building during an abortive coup in 1938.[1][10] He maintained correspondence with neo-Nazi leaders such as Matt Koehl. He was interviewed in depth by the Greek far-right magazine To Antidoto and has also featured in the literature of the Black Order.[10]

[edit] Ideas

Serrano termed his philosophy Esoteric Hitlerism, which he has described as a new religious faith "able to change the materialistic man of today into a new idealistic hero", and also as "much more than a religion: it is a way to transmute a hero into God."[citation needed]

In 1984 he published his 643-page tome, Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra (Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar), which is dedicated "To the glory of the Führer, Adolf Hitler". In this arcane work Serrano unfolds his ultimate philosophical testament through elaborate esoteric and mythological symbolism.”

What follows is beyond anything I could ever conceive. Read it yourself.

Jung had many in depth discussions with Serrano the Nazi occultist on the highest topics of Hindu spirituality. This is Jung: the medium of Abraxas, the vibhuti of the shadow. His task was unique, and so was the way he performed it.

Paulette

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by Sandeep on Wed 05 May 2010 10:55 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

These encounters with Hesse and Jung culminated in Serrano's most famous and prestigious book, C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships.

Serrano's book has the following rather curious statement on page 48

'I understand you have come from India,' he(Jung) said. 'I was there sometime ago, trying to convince the Hindus that it is impossible to get rid of the idea of the Ego or of consciousness, even in the deepest state of samadhi'

And on page 56 Jung says

And do you know what the Self is for the Western man? It is Christ, for Christ is the archetype of the hero, representing man's highest aspiration. All this is very mysterious and at times frightening.

And his views on marriage are on page 58

Basically speaking, however, man is polygamous. The people of the Mussulman Empire knew that very well. Nevertheless, marrying several women at the same time is a primitive solution and would be rather expensive today.
Jung then laughed before continuing.
I think the French have found the solution in Number Three.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by Anonymous on Thu 06 May 2010 06:24 AM IST | Permanent Link

Auroman, regarding Serrano on women and Tantra, go through the posting I am quoting below. One of Serrano’s central themes is the relationship between sexual magic and political power (especially national socialism). This theme and Tantra are dealt at length in the frightening, much detailed FASCIST OCCULTISM AND ITS CLOSE RELATIONSHIP TO BUDDHIST TANTRISM, http://www.american-buddha.com/fascistoccult.htm., from where I reproduce the following excerpt:

“[Serrano] published numerous books with an occult/poetic content. Even his work best known in the West, in which he recounts his encounters with the German poet Hermann Hesse and the depth psychologist C. G. Jung, displays a great deal of occultist speculation when one reads it attentively. Serrano titled his book The Hermetic Circle: Conversations, Correspondence, and Memories of Hermann Hesse and C. G. Jung.[5] This title alone should signal that the author had formed an esoteric brotherhood with Jung and Hesse, a sort of triumvirate of magicians who had gained admittance to the archetypal storehouses of the human subconscious and are unique in the twentieth century. Jung was sympathetic towards the Chilean who had courted him. He wrote an effusive foreword to Serrano’s tale, The Visit of the Queen of Saba: “This book is unusual. It is a dream amidst other dreams, one could say, and completely different to the spontaneous creations of the unconscious with which I am familiar” (Serrano, 1980, p. 7).”

Quite interestingly, Serrano too had a tremendous interest in the Jungian “anima”, and in the most extreme tantric way, as the above study documents. Jung’s enthusiasm for Serrano’s “The Visit of the Queen of Saba” tells a lot.

Not less frightening is the interview to Serrano “Esoteric Hitlerist”, http://allfatherwotan.org/serranointerview.html, from which I reproduce Serrano’s comments on Jung’s relationship to Nazism:

“You define yourself as an "Esoteric Hitlerist." Please define the term.

Serrano: Hitler said, "Whoever thinks that National Socialism is only a political movement does not understand anything." National Socialism was always Hitlerism, and Hitlerism always had an esoteric foundation. At the end of the 1930's and during the war years it was not possible or convenient that this theme be widely known. However, after the war and its apparent loss, there was no other way for Hitlerism than the esoteric development. For me, Esoteric Hitlerism is being possessed by the Archetype of the collective unconscious, which the Greeks used to call Gods -- among them, Apollo, which really is Wotan for the Germans, and Vishnu or Shiva for the Hindus -- and its development in the individual and collective souls of the actual Hitlerist warriors. That means a new/old religion, with all of its rituals and myths which are necessary to discover, or rediscover. Its central Drama is the apparition on this earth of the Person Adolf Hitler, the last Avatar, who came to produce this enormous storm, or catastrophe, in order to awaken all those who are asleep, and to commence the New Age, which will come after the Deluge. That is the reason why we have started to count the years of this New Age beginning with the birth of Hitler.

C.G. Jung, in an interview before the war, compared Adolf Hitler to Mohammed. Do we consider Mohammed a politician? He was a prophet with enormous political repercussions in the world. I consider Adolf Hitler to be the greatest figure in the world, and the repercussions of his visions, thoughts and action would be impossible to calculate today. If we were to think in Indo-Aryan fashion, as Savitri Devi did, we must see in Hitler an incarnation of the divinity, an Avatar, as in the title of my book Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar.

[…] To what extent does your esotericism relate to Jungian archetypes and the use of symbols such as the runes?

Serrano: The runes are very important magic symbols, but the code of their interpretation has been lost, and their power almost destroyed by the malicious vulgarization and popularization by the Jews. It is necessary to rescue them, as I did in my book Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar. We must use them in our mental combat. However, it is not prudent to talk very openly about all of this.

[…] Please tell us under what circumstances did you come to know Carl Jung.

Serrano: In my book I explain the circumstances which brought me to meet C.G. Jung. He wrote the foreword for my book The Visits Of The Queen Of Sheba. I think that this Swiss Professor knew better than anyone else in our time who Hitler really was. In the book by Professor William McGuire Jung Speaking, published by Princeton University Press, three interviews of Professor Jung on Hitler are reproduced. One was in the London Observer, another in an American newspaper, and the third on Radio Berlin, at the end of 1938. In these interviews Jung stated that Hitler was possessed by the collective unconscious of the Aryan race. This means that Hitler was the spokesman of the whole Aryan world. This extraordinary theme is explored in my book Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar.
We know that Jung recognized National Socialism as a resurgence of the Wotan "Shadow" of the Germanic folk. Did Jung view the release of this Archetype as a positive or a negative phenomenon?

Serrano: Professor Jung was an enormous thinker, but he was a Swiss and, therefore, a contradictory personality, very different in character to Heidegger, as a matter of fact. Immediately after the War he started to change,and made very shameful statements about Hitler and of the German people. These statements I did not know until very recently and have caused me to lose part of my admiration for the Jung personality. Also, Jung did not understand anything about Wotanism and the runes. I think this was caused by his Christian background. His father was a Lutheran minister, as was the father of Hermann Hesse, Holderlin and, if I am not mistaken, the father of Nietzsche. This fact creates such a confusion and internal drama, that it drove the last two to madness. The furthest that Jung would go was "Meister Eckhart" and gnosticism. On the other hand, he was a freemason, as many of the Lutherans are.

Nevertheless, Jung was a cunning and opportunistic man, as I can visualize it today. When Hitler was in full power and National Socialism on top, Jung coined the concept of the "two collective unconscious," which was a lethal weapon against the Jews, as well as the Freudians. After the War, this concept disappeared from his writings, so completely, in fact, that today it is impossible to find it in volumes of his complete works. I have a book published in Argentina in 1939 under the name El Yo Y El Inconsciente (The "I" And The Unconscious) where the theory of the two collective unconscious is explained. Moreover, Jung took a Jewish woman as a secretary.

Some friends of Jung, such as Van der Post, state that Jung came into conflict with the National Socialist regime. What were Jung's true views on National Socialism in the later years of his life?

Serrano: In this case, the statement of Van der Post claiming that Jung came into conflict with the National Socialist regime is totally untrue. He never had any direct contact with the regime. He only was the President of the Psychiatric Society of Berlin, replacing Dr. Goering, brother of Hermann Goering. Jung only tried to please the National Socialists at the time, and after its defeat he recanted, to please the Jews. This was never the case with Heidegger or Ezra Pound. It is because of this fact that I have said that even though I admire the thinking of Jung, I have come not to admire his character. [2]

(Editor’s note)

[2] Jung's theories on the collective unconscious lent themselves readily to National Socialist and other Volkisch philosophers. Indeed, Jung himself had written, "No doubt, on an earlier and deeper level of psychic development, where it is still impossible to distinguish between an Aryan, Semitic, Hamatic, or Mongolian mentality, all human races have a common collective psyche. But with the beginning of racial differentiation, essential differences are developed in the collective psyche as well. For this reason, we cannot transplant the spirit of a foreign race into our own mentality without sensible injury to the latter, a fact which does not however, deter sundry natures of feeble instinct from affecting Indian philosophy and the like." At an early stage, Jung was associated with Jacob Hauer, founder of the Nordic Faith Movement, whose movement Jung advised Germans to follow in preference to 'Germanized Christianity,' Hauer's activities being described by Jung as "heroic" and directed by the force of Wotan.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by Anonymous on Thu 06 May 2010 06:27 AM IST | Permanent Link

Please remove the previous posting: I am writing, not Auroman.

Paulette

Auroman, regarding Serrano on women and Tantra, go through the posting I am quoting below. One of Serrano’s central themes is the relationship between sexual magic and political power (especially national socialism). This theme and Tantra are dealt at length in the frightening, much detailed FASCIST OCCULTISM AND ITS CLOSE RELATIONSHIP TO BUDDHIST TANTRISM, http://www.american-buddha.com/fascistoccult.htm., from where I reproduce the following excerpt:

“[Serrano] published numerous books with an occult/poetic content. Even his work best known in the West, in which he recounts his encounters with the German poet Hermann Hesse and the depth psychologist C. G. Jung, displays a great deal of occultist speculation when one reads it attentively. Serrano titled his book The Hermetic Circle: Conversations, Correspondence, and Memories of Hermann Hesse and C. G. Jung.[5] This title alone should signal that the author had formed an esoteric brotherhood with Jung and Hesse, a sort of triumvirate of magicians who had gained admittance to the archetypal storehouses of the human subconscious and are unique in the twentieth century. Jung was sympathetic towards the Chilean who had courted him. He wrote an effusive foreword to Serrano’s tale, The Visit of the Queen of Saba: “This book is unusual. It is a dream amidst other dreams, one could say, and completely different to the spontaneous creations of the unconscious with which I am familiar” (Serrano, 1980, p. 7).”

Quite interestingly, Serrano too had a tremendous interest in the Jungian “anima”, and in the most extreme tantric way, as the above study documents. Jung’s enthusiasm for Serrano’s “The Visit of the Queen of Saba” tells a lot.

Not less frightening is the interview to Serrano “Esoteric Hitlerist”, http://allfatherwotan.org/serranointerview.html, from which I reproduce Serrano’s comments on Jung’s relationship to Nazism:

“You define yourself as an "Esoteric Hitlerist." Please define the term.

Serrano: Hitler said, "Whoever thinks that National Socialism is only a political movement does not understand anything." National Socialism was always Hitlerism, and Hitlerism always had an esoteric foundation. At the end of the 1930's and during the war years it was not possible or convenient that this theme be widely known. However, after the war and its apparent loss, there was no other way for Hitlerism than the esoteric development. For me, Esoteric Hitlerism is being possessed by the Archetype of the collective unconscious, which the Greeks used to call Gods -- among them, Apollo, which really is Wotan for the Germans, and Vishnu or Shiva for the Hindus -- and its development in the individual and collective souls of the actual Hitlerist warriors. That means a new/old religion, with all of its rituals and myths which are necessary to discover, or rediscover. Its central Drama is the apparition on this earth of the Person Adolf Hitler, the last Avatar, who came to produce this enormous storm, or catastrophe, in order to awaken all those who are asleep, and to commence the New Age, which will come after the Deluge. That is the reason why we have started to count the years of this New Age beginning with the birth of Hitler.

C.G. Jung, in an interview before the war, compared Adolf Hitler to Mohammed. Do we consider Mohammed a politician? He was a prophet with enormous political repercussions in the world. I consider Adolf Hitler to be the greatest figure in the world, and the repercussions of his visions, thoughts and action would be impossible to calculate today. If we were to think in Indo-Aryan fashion, as Savitri Devi did, we must see in Hitler an incarnation of the divinity, an Avatar, as in the title of my book Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar.

[…] To what extent does your esotericism relate to Jungian archetypes and the use of symbols such as the runes?

Serrano: The runes are very important magic symbols, but the code of their interpretation has been lost, and their power almost destroyed by the malicious vulgarization and popularization by the Jews. It is necessary to rescue them, as I did in my book Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar. We must use them in our mental combat. However, it is not prudent to talk very openly about all of this.

[…] Please tell us under what circumstances did you come to know Carl Jung.

Serrano: In my book I explain the circumstances which brought me to meet C.G. Jung. He wrote the foreword for my book The Visits Of The Queen Of Sheba. I think that this Swiss Professor knew better than anyone else in our time who Hitler really was. In the book by Professor William McGuire Jung Speaking, published by Princeton University Press, three interviews of Professor Jung on Hitler are reproduced. One was in the London Observer, another in an American newspaper, and the third on Radio Berlin, at the end of 1938. In these interviews Jung stated that Hitler was possessed by the collective unconscious of the Aryan race. This means that Hitler was the spokesman of the whole Aryan world. This extraordinary theme is explored in my book Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar.
We know that Jung recognized National Socialism as a resurgence of the Wotan "Shadow" of the Germanic folk. Did Jung view the release of this Archetype as a positive or a negative phenomenon?

Serrano: Professor Jung was an enormous thinker, but he was a Swiss and, therefore, a contradictory personality, very different in character to Heidegger, as a matter of fact. Immediately after the War he started to change,and made very shameful statements about Hitler and of the German people. These statements I did not know until very recently and have caused me to lose part of my admiration for the Jung personality. Also, Jung did not understand anything about Wotanism and the runes. I think this was caused by his Christian background. His father was a Lutheran minister, as was the father of Hermann Hesse, Holderlin and, if I am not mistaken, the father of Nietzsche. This fact creates such a confusion and internal drama, that it drove the last two to madness. The furthest that Jung would go was "Meister Eckhart" and gnosticism. On the other hand, he was a freemason, as many of the Lutherans are.

Nevertheless, Jung was a cunning and opportunistic man, as I can visualize it today. When Hitler was in full power and National Socialism on top, Jung coined the concept of the "two collective unconscious," which was a lethal weapon against the Jews, as well as the Freudians. After the War, this concept disappeared from his writings, so completely, in fact, that today it is impossible to find it in volumes of his complete works. I have a book published in Argentina in 1939 under the name El Yo Y El Inconsciente (The "I" And The Unconscious) where the theory of the two collective unconscious is explained. Moreover, Jung took a Jewish woman as a secretary.

Some friends of Jung, such as Van der Post, state that Jung came into conflict with the National Socialist regime. What were Jung's true views on National Socialism in the later years of his life?

Serrano: In this case, the statement of Van der Post claiming that Jung came into conflict with the National Socialist regime is totally untrue. He never had any direct contact with the regime. He only was the President of the Psychiatric Society of Berlin, replacing Dr. Goering, brother of Hermann Goering. Jung only tried to please the National Socialists at the time, and after its defeat he recanted, to please the Jews. This was never the case with Heidegger or Ezra Pound. It is because of this fact that I have said that even though I admire the thinking of Jung, I have come not to admire his character. [2]

(Editor’s note)

[2] Jung's theories on the collective unconscious lent themselves readily to National Socialist and other Volkisch philosophers. Indeed, Jung himself had written, "No doubt, on an earlier and deeper level of psychic development, where it is still impossible to distinguish between an Aryan, Semitic, Hamatic, or Mongolian mentality, all human races have a common collective psyche. But with the beginning of racial differentiation, essential differences are developed in the collective psyche as well. For this reason, we cannot transplant the spirit of a foreign race into our own mentality without sensible injury to the latter, a fact which does not however, deter sundry natures of feeble instinct from affecting Indian philosophy and the like." At an early stage, Jung was associated with Jacob Hauer, founder of the Nordic Faith Movement, whose movement Jung advised Germans to follow in preference to 'Germanized Christianity,' Hauer's activities being described by Jung as "heroic" and directed by the force of Wotan.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by Anonymous on Thu 06 May 2010 06:28 AM IST | Permanent Link

Same story. Please remove Auroman's name and put mine.

Paulette

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by Anonymous on Thu 06 May 2010 07:24 AM IST | Permanent Link

As still the error is not corrected, I am the author of the previous posting on Serrano, and of this one on psychiatry.

Paulette

Regarding Johnston’s bizarre contention that Jung was not so involved with schizophrenics and psychiatric patients, not only Jung worked nine years at the renowned psychiatric hospital Burghölzli, university of Zürich, with Eugen Bleuler, the “Swiss psychiatrist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness and coining the term schizophrenia” (Wiki), but he authored as well famous books on the basis of his patients’s vicissitudes, like the three books below (which I am having). Please note that the most famous book “Symbols of Transformation: An Analysis of the Prelude to a Case of Scbizophrenia” keeps being reprinted, and by major publishers. When first he wrote it Jung was 36, but at the ripe age of 75 he took the trouble to even re-write it! “Mandala Symbolism” mainly deals with drawings by a schizophrenic lady, and “Dreams” mainly with dreams by a most disturbed patient. From:
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=755&Itemid=41

Symbols of Transformation: An Analysis of the Prelude to a Case of Scbizophrenia, by C. G. Jung. (Ger.: Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido. Leipzig and Vienna: Deuticke Verlag, 1912.) (Orig. Eng]. title: Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformation and Symbolism of the Libido. New York: Moffat, Yard, 1916; ed.2 1919; London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubnet, 1917-51; New York: Dodd Mead, 1925-71.) London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951; 1956; New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1956; New York: Harper & Row, 1962p; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U. Press/Bollingen, ed. 2 1967; 1976p (CW 5) (557+ xxix, incl. 59-p. index, 30-p. bibl., 131 illus.).

Written in his thirty-sixth year and rewritten at the age of seventy-five, this book is a landmark of where Jung's way diverged from the psychoanalytical school of Freud, whose framework of ideas about psychic phenomena was too narrow for Jung. The work is a very extensive commentary, with numerous symbolic illustrations, on Jung's practical analysis of the precursory stages of schizophrenia of a patient. The symptoms of the case provide the thread by which Jung is guided into the labyrinth of symbols from dreams, for which he interprets parallels by amplification from a great variety of sources. Jung deals primarily with two major dreams from the patient's complicated fantasy system. He then discusses at length the topics of the concept of libido; transformation of the libido; origin of the hero; symbols of the mother and of rebirth; the battle of deliverance from the mother; the dual mother; and sacrifice. His intricate study of symbolic parallels is drawn from mythology, religion, ethnology, art, and literature, as well as psychiatry.

Mandala Symbolism, by C. G. Jung. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U. Press/Bollingen, 1972p (121 + ix, incl. 11-p. index, 10- p. bibl., 85 illus.).

Consisting of three excerpts from the Collected Works (vol. 9, pt. 1), this collection opens with a concise summary of mandalas published in a popular Swiss magazine in 1955. In a long essay, "A Study in the Process of Individuation," which was revised and expanded from a 1933 lecture, Jung illustrates the process with a case study of a young woman, in which twenty-four mandala paintings are interpreted in detail as representations of material from her unconscious in the initial stages of individuation. His 1950 essay, "Concerning Mandala Symbolism," offers a selection of fifty-four mandala pictures, most of which were produced spontaneously by patients in the course of analysis.

Dreams, by C. G. Jung. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U. Press/Bollingen, 1974p; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982p; London: Ark Paperbacks, 1985p (337 + xix, incl. 2-p. index, 13-p. bibl., 107 illus.).
Reportedly having carefully analyzed about 2,000 dreams per year, Jung's devotion to and experience with dream material is reflected in all of his writings. Six excerpts from the Collected Works (vols. 4, 8, 12, and 16) are arranged under the headings of dreams and psychoanalysis (a 1909 essay on the analysis of dreams and a 1910 article on the significance of number dreams); dreams and psychic energy (a 1916 essay and a 1948 expansion of general aspects of dream psychology; and a 1945 article and a 1948 revision on the nature of dreams); the practical use of dream analysis (a 1931 lecture); and individual dream symbolism in relation to alchemy.

Also, these volumes are part of Jung’s Collected Works:

Volume I: Psychiatric Studies
Volume III: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease
Volume IV: Freud and Psychoanalysis
Volume XVI: The Practice of Psychotherapy

Paulette

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An Aurobindian Perspective and other Reflections on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Praxis and Research (V-B)—by David Johnston

by David on Sat 08 May 2010 11:21 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

RESPONSE TO PAULETTE HADNAGY [3]

According to comments on my essay on “An Aurobindian Perspective on Jung’s Psychology of Individuation: Research and Practice” made by Paulette Hadnagy, the way the Mother understands dreams and the way Jung understands them are profoundly different. Here, she is destructively flaying away at the core of Jungian praxis and, from her perspective, deriding it as a more or less useless for the sadhak of Integral Yoga. Paulette implies that there is no role for an outside therapist, and significant dreams for sadhaks of Integral Yoga are, in any event, rare. Moreover, one can learn to change the course of dreams at will according to what one consciously wishes. Here are relevant excerpts from Paulette’s comments:

• “there is a profound divergence between the way Jung interprets dreams – and the way the Mother does, and the same is true regarding sleep as well.”

• “But the occurrence and very interpretations of symbols and dreams, even when the symbol is the same, or the dream depicts a seemingly similar situation, not only varies from individual to individual, but also keeps varying according to one’s stage of sadhana; to such an extent that as a general rule the Mother tended to refuse interpreting others’ dream, exhorting instead her people to do the job themselves.”

• “most dreams are of a trivial, insignificant nature………. [and] .! Rare are the dreams that in Integral Yoga carry a significance; but when these occur they are of an extreme importance. Not only the proper interpretation of dreams is essential, but we must develop the capacity to halt a dream at will, and/or change its course at will, or resume it at will and also directing it in the most positive direction we wish. This is what dreams in Integral Yoga are about – nothing less.

My answer to these assertions follows.

THE SUBJECT OF DREAMS ACCORDING TO THE MOTHER AND C. G. JUNG

INTRODUCTION
The subject of dreams is exceptionally important for understanding Jung’s system of psychology. As far as praxis is concerned, one could say that, for Jungian therapy proper, the study of one’s dreams are an integral aspect of coming to terms with the psyche and the individuation process. When properly understood and related to, they can be a major factor in gaining self-knowledge, where self-knowledge is understood not as ego knowledge, but as knowledge of a deeper non-ego reality. Yet, for Jung, dreams are not the royal road to the unconscious per se; rather, psychological complexes are the royal road, where the core of the complex is the archetype. Thus, in addition to dream-work, which Jung considered highly important, Jung recommended a process of meditation he called active imagination, where one enters the inner fantasy world with one’s conscious ego intact and, essentially, engages in a dialogue with aspects of the psyche. One way of initiating the process is by taking a dream, entering into it with waking consciousness, accessible functions of consciousness, beliefs, and values and, basically, dreaming the dream onwards. The process involves being sympathetically open to and responsive to dream and fantasy figures with which one is in dialogue.

Although Jung had no dream theory per se, he concluded that there are two fundamental types of dreams, ordinary dreams, which are mainly situational and archetypal or big dreams, which are numinous and symbolic. The former dreams, according to him, are relatively unimportant, while the latter are significant and provide a blueprint for unfolding life of which one can be potentially conscious. Although, from a Jungian perspective, the individual is the final arbiter of the meaning of any given dream, given the universal meaning of every archetypal symbol, someone well-versed in archetypal symbolism can help people become conscious of the meaning of these types of dreams. In fact, by paying careful attention to dreams over a long period of time, even dreams that are not directly archetypal can unveil their significance, especially when examining a sequential series of dreams. There is considerable value in carefully examining a sequential group of dreams for this reason and not to dismiss them as trivial. Typically, a symbolic dream initiates a series of dreams that fill out its intent over a period of time. In fact, as Jung has given living proof with the fantasy material described in his Red Book, the details of dreams and fantasy material in midlife can be filled out over a lifetime. In his words: “The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important in my life – in them everything essential was decided. It all began then; the later details are only supplements and clarifications of the material that burst forth from the unconscious, and at first swamped me. It was the prima materia for a lifetime work [1]. Once Jung worked his way through the experiences recorded in The Red Book in his confrontation with the unconscious, he was prepared to confront and educate the world on his findings.

I have personally reflected on the question on the compatibility of Jung’s understanding of dreams and the Mother’s for some time, and have come to the conclusion that their views are essentially the same or, in essence, compatible. The importance of studying one’s dreams is reflected in what the Mother is reported to have said regarding the value of paying careful attention to them. When asked whether it is “useful to note down one’s dreams,” the Mother replied: “Yes, for more than a year I applied myself to this kind of self-discipline [2].” On another occasion she was asked if it is “not necessary to remember one’s dreams” to which she replied: “This is not necessary.” Yet she then said: “It is useful if one wants to have control over one’s sleep [3].” She continued, advising her disciple on ways to help remember dreams.

The Symbolic Dream and the Ordinary Dream
The primary point of convergence between Jung and the Mother’s mutual perspectives is that both saw the symbolic dream as being important while the considered other dreams to be only situational and less important. Thus, the Mother is reported to have said regarding symbolic dreams that “one has lived for those moments a much intenser and truer life than the physical one….Usually the symbolic dream,” she noted, “is much clearer, more precise, more coordinated, and carries with it a kind of consciousness of something which is true [4].” These sentiments are precisely the same as Jung’s view and common experience. The Mother, like Jung, also exhorted one to become conscious of nights and sleep as a source of self-knowledge. Thus, she said that “we should observe our dreams attentively; they are often useful instructors who can give us powerful help on our way to self-conquest [5].” So far in this discussion, there is nothing but agreement between Jung’s view and the Mother’s.

But in apparently contradictory comments the Mother is, on the one hand, recorded as saying, that, “in a man’s sleep his true nature is revealed [6]” and elsewhere that: “Very few dreams have meaning, an instructive value,” although she indicates that “all dreams can show you what your present state of consciousness is………. [7].” Should one understand, as I do, that what the Mother means by “instructive value” refers to archetypal symbolic dreams, then, she is saying the same thing as Jung. Moreover, the fact that properly understood situational or ordinary dreams can indicate one’s state of consciousness has definite psychological value from the Mother’s as well as from a Jungian perspective. The fact is that most people are relatively blind to their state of consciousness and see themselves according to conscious ego values. I have, in fact, often noticed that one common error for individuals in studying their dreams by themselves is the tendency to identify with the dream-ego [oneself in the dream] rather than seeing the meaning of the dream from the larger perspective of the Self. The dream, when understood properly, shows the dreamer the situation one finds oneself in from the point of view of the unconscious, and not the conscious ego.

The Individual as Final Arbiter of a Dream’s Meaning and the Therapist
One can understand the Mother to have propagated the belief that only individuals can interpret their own dreams and there is, consequently, not only no need for an outside helpful guide or commentator, but they get in the way. In apparent support of this opinion, the Mother, in fact, is recorded as saying that “Dreams are exclusively personal [8].” She also noted that “Each person has his own world of dream imagery peculiar to himself………But even dreams that have a somewhat deeper origin are still obscure,” she observed, “since they are peculiarly personal, in the sense that they depend for their makeup almost entirely upon the experiences and idiosyncrasies of the individual….Visions are also made up of symbols that do not necessarily obtain universal currency. “Symbols,” she went on to say, “vary according to race and tradition and religion [9]. The way I understand the forgoing is that race, tradition and religious backgrounds have an influence on dream imagery, which is one of the reason why these factors must be taken into consideration when trying to understand the meaning of a dream. That is what I believe the Mother is referring to and that perfectly resonates with a Jungian perspective. As far as the universal nature of a true symbol is concerned, and here I mean to penetrate behind the various images, what the Mother says about “a vision of one in India you call the Divine Mother the Catholics say it is the Virgin Mary, and the Japanese call it Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy,” and so on, and that “It is the same force, the same power, but the images made of it are different in different faiths” emphasizes the universal aspect of a symbol [10]. In this way she is indicating how the identical archetypal energy, here of the Divine Mother, is universal despite its variation in imagistic expressions.

Individuals are the final arbiter to a dream’s meaning, but a therapist with knowledge of archetypal symbols can not only help impart the universal meaning of a dream’s symbolism, but also be a valuable and experienced witness that can challenge an individual’s conscious [ego] understanding. This principle finds support in the Mother’s following statement regarding dreams: ”… if we know how to translate into intellectual language the more or less inadequate images into which the brain has translated these events, we can learn many things… [11].” An experienced therapist educated in archetypal dream symbolism can help an individual do just that, while educating them in the process to do the same thing.

Dreams as Trivial or Meaningful and Informative of One’s Psychological Status
Sometimes in reading the Mother’s comments on dreams one can gain the impression that they are mostly trivial and insignificant. In support of this opinion, the Mother is reported as saying: “The great majority of dreams have no other value than that of a purely mechanical and uncontrolled activity of the physical brain [12].” She also said: “There are also other dreams which are nothing but futile manifestations of the erratic activities of certain mental functions [13]].” In a somewhat similar vein, she is reported to have told a child regarding his dream that: “there is no explanation.” Elsewhere she noted: “Usually I give no meaning to dreams, because each one has his own symbolism which has a meaning only for oneself [14].” Whatever validity these comments have in themselves they appear to contradict comments quoted above. The difficulty in understanding some of the Mother’s comments on dreams is that she is reported to have said many things about dreams and sometimes what is noted appears contradictory to other comments.

To begin with, it must be acknowledged that it is difficult to fully discern the context of the Mother’s statements. Indeed, should one takes these comments as is one can come to the conclusion that most dreams are, indeed, insignificant. However, in the context of the other recorded statements of the Mother, these observations do not necessarily mean that individuals cannot find some significance in many if not most dreams, some being meaningful and instructive, others informing dreamers of their psychological status from the point of view of the unconscious, as indicated above. For correct understanding, it is always essential in studying dreams to include the individual’s personal background and associations to dream images as well as to consider their universal archetypal meaning. In that way, along with the universal meaning of archetypal symbols, one has personal associations to help work out the meaning of the dream. Should one take one’s dreams seriously over a long period of time, they change and their message becomes more relevant and less trivial. There are also a potentially increasing number of experiences of synchronicity, revealing the premonitory aspect of dreams.

Lucid Dreams and Active Imagination: Applying Ego-will vs. Dialogue
The Mother seems to recommend that sadhaks need to learn how to engage in something like what is today called, lucid dreaming. In one case the Mother is particularly referring especially to dreams where something happens one doesn’t like, for instance the possibility of being killed in a dream. Thus, the Mother indicated that one needs to “be conscious that you are dreaming” and to “organize your dream as you want [15].” In answer to: “whether these dreams are not of much importance,” she answered “yes they are, and one must be conscious of what can happen.” Later she said: “Usually these dreams are extremely interesting and give you precise indications” about something to be done or not, about relationships, how to act in different circumstances, and so on [16]. In these quotes, I note that the Mother is again indicating the importance of becoming aware of dreams and in engaging in them in a full-bodied way.

There is, nonetheless the risk that by applying one’s ego-will to changing the course of a dream, one does not heed the larger message of the dream itself and represses it. In fact, there is a parallel to the process recommended by the Mother in what Jung referred to as active imagination, one form of which is to dream the dream onwards, as I indicated above. In Jung’s approach, individuals retain their waking consciousness, values, attitudes, feelings and accessible functions of consciousness and enter into the fantasy world of the dream. Rather than imposing one’s will, one engages in a dialogue with the other participating fantasy figures in order to find an appropriate solution to the question put to the dreamer by the unconscious.

In active imagination it is a question of becoming more conscious and often dream and fantasy figures have something to teach the dreamer or the waking ego. The idea is to have a receptive attitude in the fantasy as well as asserting one’s own point of view. I have noticed that the problem one often has in understanding dreams and engaging in active imagination is that one assumes one’s dream ego or waking ego is absolutely correct, when, in fact, from the point of view of the larger Self or psychic being, this is not the case. The psyche inevitably wants the conscious viewpoint to enlarge itself.

Subjective and Objective Interpretation of Dreams
Another challenging comment made by the Mother is regarding people one meets in a dream. She is recorded as saying: “If one person dreams of another, it means both have met at night, more often in the vital region, but it can also happen elsewhere, in the subtle physical or the mental [17].” I do not doubt the possibility of this occurring. In Jungian language,I n fact, this is recognized as interpreting a dream on the objective level, which is sometimes necessary. But, by and large, when dreaming of someone else, one is inevitably dreaming of a shadow or anima/animus aspect of oneself. Interpreting the dream in this way means interpreting it on a subjective level. In some cases one can interpret the dream both subjectively and objectively. The key to determining whether the dream should be understood on an objective or subjective level comes by way of discernment through utilization of the feeling function.

I have noticed that, at the beginning of therapy, people often have difficulty pulling back projections from outer figures and immediately assume they are involved with the real person in the dream. Some people even conclude that they are carrying a burden for the other person, which is usually simply hubris. Evidence for the fact that it is usually about a shadow or anima/animus aspect of oneself or rather than the objective individual is that, should one pay careful attention to dreams and their significance over time, there is a transformation in the quality expressed by that aspect of oneself as it figures in dreams. At the beginning of studying his dreams, one fellow, for instance, dreamt of a wild unruly out-of-control hairy shadow figure that, many years later, was depicted as disciplined and well-dressed and, subsequently, became involved in spiritually. This refers to an ethical/spiritual transformation at the physical-vital level of being.

Should the reader not understand or agree with what I am saying, I would suggest the following test. Take a dream that includes a person one is close to like a brother, sister, friend, neighbor, husband or wife. Tell the other person about what happened in one’s dream concerning them and ask them how that relates to them. They will inevitably not see any connection or clearly fabricate some connection. In fact it is instructive to compare dreams between two people about each other. They will usually be quite different, based on each other’s subjective reality. At any rate, the subjective and objective interpretation of dreams can be researched longitudinally over time as can any way of interpreting dreams.

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The Mother’s way of appreciating dreams and Jung’s approach to dreams are, in essence, the same. There are two principal types of dreams, ordinary dreams and symbolic archetypal dreams, the latter being the most important, the former, at best, filling in the details of the unfolding psyche over time. The first type of dream is instructive and provides a blueprint for the way to apprehend life and its destined unfolding, and the second type of dream tells one the situation as it is from the point of view of the unconscious. Although the symbolic dream is the most meaningful, the more ordinary variety can help one become more conscious of the situation as it is. Although dreams are usually about one’s own subjective life, in some cases, there is an objective aspect to the dream that can be profitably realized. Any questions about the way dreams are understood can be submitted to longitudinal research studies according to the parameters indicated by both Jung and Sri Aurobindo.

REFERENCES
[1]. C. G. Jung (1965). Memories, dreams, reflections. Recorded and Edited by Aniela Jaffé. Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Vintage Books: a Division of Random House. p 199.

[2]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 233

[3]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 233

[4]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. pp. 247, 248.

[5]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 229.

[6]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 228.

[7]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 241.

[8]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 244.

[9]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 243.

[10]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 242.

[11]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. pp.238, 239

[12]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 229.

[13]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 229.

[14]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 242.

[15]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 258.

[16]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 259.”

[17]. The Mother (2008). Becoming one: The psychology of integral yoga. A Compilation of the Mothers Writings. Auroville: Published with a grant from Stichting De Zaaier. p. 2

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