The Quest: Vision in an Age of Crisis. Jungian Psychotherapy

Nature, besides being benevolent, is also death-threatening and can appear malevolent. Survival demands aggression. Destructiveness and selfishness are vital parts of our animal and therefore human psyche. Our savagery is infamous. Thus, we have the opposites of nature, the good and the terrible, within ourselves. These opposites in our experience of nature, the two faces of the Great Mother, the good and the terrible, are paralleled very closely by the psychoanalytic school of Melanie Klein which postulates that all human infants begin life in a paranoid schizoid state in which the good and bad breast alternate as fundamental structuring experiences of the infant psyche. This duality is resolved in the ‘depressive position’ which would find its equivalent in the history of the species as the birth of civilization. Freud also postulated that life and civilization emerged and developed out of two polar forces – love and hate.

En este episodio vamos a:

# Explorar la propia psicología de Jung, especialmente en su infancia, como trasfondo del texto Respuesta a Job.

# Presentar el relato de Jung sobre sus luchas religiosas e incluso teológicas en su juventud.

# Dar un breve relato de la historia de Job como se presenta en la biblia.

# Presentar la pregunta planteada por esta historia bíblica que Jung sintió que tenía que responder.

This episode presents the early stage of the human psyche as it is immersed in nature and the realm of the Great Mother. The themes of fertility and power, applicable to all life forms, saturate the history of humanity, most evidently in this period stretching roughly from 40,000 years ago up to birth of modern civilizations.

This episode explores the emergence of the Higher Self within the evolution of the hominid species. For example, evidence of care of the sick and dying in the our hominid ancestors over half a million years ago; burial of the dead with symbolic objects over 100 thousand years ago; cave paintings, sculpted earth goddesses and the like from 30 thousand years ago. It is hypothesised that the higher self and even love emerged as a transcendent response to the intense awareness of death, especially in Homo Sapiens.

Seis procesos involucrados en la Gran Obra Alquímica - descrito por Anne Baring. Ellos son:

Primero. El rescate del espíritu perdido escondido en la naturaleza y en nosotros mismos.

Segundo. El proceso de transformación que implica este rescate.

Tercero. La muerte de la vieja conciencia simbolizada por el Viejo Rey y la Reina.

Cuarto. La formación de la nueva conciencia simbolizada por el Joven Rey y la Reina.

Quinto. La formación del Hermafrodita – la unión de los dos elementos transformados

Sexto. La integración de cuerpo, alma y espíritu.

The first four components of our evolved human nature are outlined. These are:

Animal inheritance which is not just our aggressive and sexual impulses (the id) but the inherited reservoir of evolved genetic intelligence.

Emotional structure: as life evolved instincts evolved into emotion. As the primate brain expanded a far greater and more differentiated emotional structure developed.

Ego consciousness  combines rational intelligence plus a distinct personality. It is a master coordinator to allow the brain to focus and plan and is the integration of multiple brain functions so that a version of ‘reality’, both subjective and objective, can exist. As Self-awareness develops in early humans, they became acutely aware of death. The ego is also the tool for repression of parts of the psyche. Homo sapiens became the world’s first repressed creature. The ego, however, is also a vehicle of meaning in a world which possessed no conscious expression up to this time. Homo sapiens is the problematic embodiment of meaning and awareness in an animal.

The unconscious. With the emergence of Homo sapiens the ego provided an automatic filter for consciousness which increasingly repressed impulses, instincts, and emotions. Three dimensions of the unconscious are relevant: the psycho-somatic unconscious, the emotional or personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.

In the next episode I will continue with the essentials of human nature and focus on higher consciousness and the archetypeof the Self. Finally I will ask what, if any, is the purpose of human nature?

Dos poderosas corrientes de alquimia provinieron del antiguo Egipto y Babilonia por un lado y de Persa y la España islámica por el otro. Estos se unieron en el florecimiento de la alquimia en la Europa de la Edad Media. Después de la iluminación científica, la alquimia prácticamente desapareció. Carl Jung jugó un papel importante en el re descubrimiento de la alquimia. Fue llamado a este trabajo por su propio mundo de sueños, y pasó muchas décadas de investigación explorándolo hasta que descifró su significado psicológico y espiritual. Incluso descubrió que las imágenes alquímicas se parecían tanto a las de los sueños de sus pacientes como a las de él mismo. El trabajo alquímico se convirtió en el marco para su descubrimiento del proceso de individuación, tan central en la psicoterapia que ofrecía al mundo.

While the precursors of our consciousness lie in our animal and hominid evolutionary past its origins are in the intelligence of life itself and beyond that in the intelligence of the cosmos. This viewpoint requires a paradigm shift away from a dead and mechanistic universe in which the emergence of life and consciousness are accidents. The alternative vision is that the cosmos is intelligence or spirit itself and has an ordering principle or logos. Matter is no longer primary but coexistent with spirit. Intelligence precedes Homo sapiens, primates and indeed all life forms. It is woven into the cosmos and the emergence of life and consciousness are the expression of it as indeed is its evolution into higher forms.

From a materialist view human consciousness is ultimately inexplicable. From the metaphysical perspective of immanence it is quite different: human consciousness is the living spirit of the universe.

¨Las experiencias de los alquimistas eran mis experiencias y su mundo era mi mundo. Este fue, por supuesto, un descubrimiento trascendental: me había topado con la contraparte histórica de mi psicología del inconsciente. La posibilidad de una comparación con la alquimia, y la cadena intelectual ininterrumpida de regreso al gnosticismo, dieron sustancia a mi psicología. Cuando examiné detenidamente estos textos antiguos, todo encajó: las imágenes de la fantasía, el material empírico que había reunido en mi práctica y las conclusiones que había sacado. Ahora comencé a comprender qué significaban estos contenidos psíquicos cuando se analizaban en perspectiva histórica." Carl Jung.  Psicología y Alquimia.

The astronomer’s lens, peering out to the creation of our universe, is human consciousness, like a mirror to its deep centre, forever examining its origins, birth, and even the pre-conditions of its existence. But ultimate knowledge forever vanishes beyond our scope. In the moment of dating the universe we realise there must be others preceding it; that the cosmos must be infinite and eternal as Giordano Bruno intuited in the 16th century; that there have been endless cycles of creation and dissolution.

The intelligence of mankind gazes at the universe only to realise that we are an expression of this infinite intelligence itself. That which we have called God or Brahman we then name cosmos; that which we named cosmos we now call Self. Consciousness and the universe are inextricably linked. One searches for the creator, forever finding oneself