Wills Duffy

BOOK LAUNCH: Speaking of Jung returns this week when we welcome back Jungian psychoanalyst Leslie Stein to discuss the third and final novel in his trilogy exploring the journey of what is required to be individuated, finally complete, whole, one’s own person. Character: A Novel drops October 28th from Chiron Publications. Speaking of Jung’s Patreon members will receive early, ad-free access on October 28th. Full release on October 29th.

“In an unpublished, original typescript held in the Kristine Mann Library in New York, the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer recounts meeting Jung at the Zurich Club in 1932 and asking him about the Self: ‘(I) asked him naively what was his opinion about the Hindu idea of the transcendental Self, indwelling man, underlying his conscious personality as well as the vast depth of the unconscious including the archetypes. But he, without as much as disclosing his lips, while from the bottle in his right hand he poured the gin, with the forefinger of his left, persistently pointed to the rising level of the liquid in the glass, until I hastily said ‘stop, stop, thank you.’ That was the gentle and inspiring way of the Zen-master to make me say ‘stop stop’ to my own talking. It implied this advice to come down from the lofty level of my question to more earthbound facts and enjoyment, to approach the soaring speculative flight to transcendental spheres which can’t be reached by mere words of abstract conceptions.’ The Self, no matter what explanation is offered or what nuance of expression is used, is an indescribable concept. What indeed is a center in our being? It cannot be brought to ground as it does not rest on a logical bedrock that there must be a center point in psyche. As well, its importance does not present to the world-at-large as a shared, agreed truth, and it does not evoke any direct Western comparisons. It has no relationship to science and has, in fact, been called a ‘scientific obscenity.’¹ The Self stands apart from culture, does not draw meaning from historical or current events, and is not reliably informed yet by neuroscience, but only by Eastern religion and Western esoterica. It cannot, in the end, be perfectly communicated, and any explanation will always fall short of what it might be. Finding the true, clear meaning will, accordingly, fail; it will necessarily always be opaque. The Self, as Jung admits, is ‘a construct that serves to express an unknowable essence which we cannot grasp as such, since by definition it transcends our powers of comprehension.’”² 1. Allport 1955, p. 37 2. CW 7, § 399 ~Leslie Stein, Jungian psychoanalyst, “Approaching the Self,” The Self in Jungian Psychology: Theory and Clinical Practice, pp. 9–10 Returning later this week to Speaking of Jung: Interviews with Jungian Analysts

“A sense of wholeness that is the Self is experienced by all of us from time to time. It is elusive because the mind is unaware of it, other than as a passing phenomenon. It is experienced, on occasion, by a prayer to God seeking unity or some resolution of a conflict. Thus, there are intimations of wholeness, moments of peace, glimpses of the workings of some mystery. All of this takes place in the confusing depths of the psyche and arises only to be displaced by more immediate issues. Jung proposes that in the second half of life many of these conflicts that constitute the stuff of day-to-day cease to have primacy and the intimations of wholeness arise with more frequency and more profoundly.⁵⁹ It could be when they arise in the second half of life that they are not acknowledged and remain unconscious. On the other hand, some disappointment, some illness, brings a person to the point of wanting to cleave toward wholeness and away from the problems. This is a journey that takes many forms—analysis, religious re-orientation, or some action that is a moving away from what came before. The sense of wholeness that precipitates the movement toward exploration is the Anthropos Quaternio, which is a priori and seeks self-reflection, but is initially unconscious. The first step in the process of change is to establish what has been in charge. This leads into the Shadow. The Shadow Quaternio exists because there is a negative side to all that appeared possible in the intimations of wholeness. Touching that Shadow produces the first suggestion of consciousness. When these Shadow contents arise, there is an expansion of the sense of wholeness as the person becomes aware of the power of the unconscious. This leads to the sense of being part of an undertaking that brings one closer to the sense of wholeness. This is the albedo stage or the Paradise Quaternio. Here there is a state of innocence brought about by understanding as in the Garden of Eden before the fall. The four rivers of Paradise are the energy flow that suffuses the new sense of wholeness and there are hints that there are secrets or a mystery that is to be found. It would seem that the albedo is a resting place for most, even as it is strengthened by more intimations from the unconscious. As the sense of wholeness increases, there is also an increasing sense of oneself and the resolution of opposites that have hitherto been below the surface. The stronger that sense, the more the mystery of the process becomes apparent and the greater the subtlety in which the world is observed. No longer is one entirely ruled by the instincts and the Shadow but the sense of wholeness moves to the foreground. At this point, perhaps in the thrall of the mystery, a connection is made to that which is outside oneself. This movement is between the albedo state and an interest in that which is outside the psyche. This is the serpent in the equation that is the mediator between worlds— that which is subjective and that which is material. The passage from the albedo to the material world is not direct but is a process that is repeated and becomes continually more expansive, thus requiring the equation to be in constant motion. The world of Nature and the material world are not the only connection; there is a re-examination of the ‘other,’ of the way one lives in the world surrounded by objects, and the values that this represents. There is, in this repeated encounter, an understanding that we are all essentially one, as are the things of the world, within the unus mundus. This is not a state that is held and completed but one that arises by an ongoing understanding of the mystery revealed by the unconscious. The Lapis Quaternio is therefore not a completed state but one that indicates in potentia the possible link with the objective, material world. It indicates that the mystery, however defined, is there as well as in the depths of one’s being. As this understanding deepens, the Self becomes the point of reference that supplies what the instincts and unrevealed unconscious could never do: a sense of peace and stability so one becomes the ‘four squared man’ or a person who is not shaken easily by events or feelings. The final stage of the return to the Rotundum constitutes a complete unio mystica or ‘station’ as Ibn Al-‘Arabī describes it, where one is no longer subject to the back and forth of new unconscious contents or the arising of strong instinctual behavior but rather the Self stands solid and fused, unable to be assailed and pointing to a closer connection with the Divine.” 59. CW 8, 749-795. ~Leslie Stein, J.D., Jungian psychoanalyst, Becoming Whole: Jung’s Equation for Realizing God, pp. 186–188 Returning next week to Speaking of Jung: Interviews with Jungian Analysts