Forty Years in the Wilderness
Presented on: Thursday, July 9, 1987
Presented by: Roger Weir
The Alchemical Core of C. G. Jung's Work (1916-1956)
Presentation 2 of 13
Forty Years in the Wilderness
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, July 9, 1987
Transcript:
The day is July 9th, 1987. This is the second lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir entitled The Alchemical Core of Jung's Work. Tonight's lecture is The Alchemical Core of Jung's work 1916-1956, 40 Years in the Wilderness.
Will this reach concrete?
I'll try and give us a break in about 45 or 50 minutes. For some of you who have been following some of the series I've been doing here for eight years this is a departure. Instead of tracing the historical sequencing of consciousness. We're now going to stay in our own time and follow the sequencing of a particular consciousness of Carl Jung. Recently Jung's very first lecture was printed. It was given in 1896. Which is nearly a century ago as everyone can compute. He was a member of a fraternity, an intellectual fraternity, which had been going on for several generations in Basel. And his title for his first lecture was The Border Zones of Exact Science. The Border Zones of Exact Science. and it reminds one of the conclusion of a poem of Wallace Stevens that in vaguer delineations man detects keaner sounds of the spirit. But what's conspicuous here is Jung's statement in the third paragraph. "as we all know the principle of inertia is not confined to the field of physical phenomena but also represents a fundamental law of human thought. Inertia. As such it is even more powerful factor in the development of world history than stupidity."
And so uncle Karl began at the age of 21. These are published in The Zofingia Lectures by the Bollingen series. It's appended to the collected works. And instead of receiving a number it's given a letter. it's A. There will be other volumes in this series. the vision seminars and others.
About 20 years later Jung in a letter to a very important colleague of his. A man Hans Schmidt who was a doctor in Basel. Who communicated with Jung by correspondence. And in fact in the beginning of psychological types he credits the correspondence with Hans Schmidt of being one of the great clarifying forums for his early ideas and thoughts. in this particular letter, November 6th 1915 he writes, "In the meantime and after long reflection the problem of resistance to understanding has clarified itself for me." And he attributes the clarification to an insight which came to him from reading a medieval mystic. Saint Brigid of Sweden who lived in the 14th century. And she recorded in a vision a conversation between God and the devil. And her record of what the devil said to God was as follows. And Jung quotes it in his letter to Hans Schmidt. This is about the psychology of devils. "Their belly is so swollen because their greed was boundless. for they filled themselves and were not sated. And so great was their grade that had they but been able to gain the whole world they would gladly have exerted themselves. And what moreover have desired to reign in heaven. Alike greed is mine. Could I but win all the souls in heaven and on earth and in purgatory I would gladly snatch them."
Jung then comments, "So the devil is a devourer. In understanding the act of understanding, comprehending is likewise a devouring. Hence there is a primordial resistance to understanding. A built-in governor that stops us from rashly agreeing to understand anything." And Jung says this is quite understandable. That one should not let oneself be swallowed if, if one is not minded to play the hero's role. For one must indeed become a hero. And a hero who is able to himself take indigestible elements and devour them. And to fight his way out of the swallowed condition. Understanding is a fearfully binding power. At times a veritable murder of the soul. As soon as it flattens out vitally important differences.
There's a kind of a dissolution of categorical structure in the act of understanding. And the deeper the understanding the more they protect a secure ordering undergoes a solution and sometimes the transformation. So that this resistance to understanding. This inertia is in fact very deep cognizance. That there are problems involved here. one cannot commit oneself to understanding lightly.
What is the essential problem? What is the essential scenario? I've chosen two quotations to bring the opposition out. One is from the very end, the last work and collected papers and analytical psychology. I've chosen the translation by C.E. Long, published here in this edition originally 1916. This is from Psychology of the Unconscious Processes. He writes, "The idea of energy and of its conservation must be a primordial image that lay dormant in the absolute unconscious. This conclusion obviously compels us to prove that a similar primordial image did really exist in the history of the human mind. And continued to be effective through thousands of years. As a matter of fact evidence of this can be produced without difficulty. Primitive religions in the most dissimilar regions of the earth are founded upon this image. These are the so called dynamistic religions whose sole and distinctive thought is the existence of some universal magical power upon which everything depends. The well-known English scholars Tyler and Frazer," this would be the great anthropologist C.B. Tyler and Sir James George Frazer. "both wrongly interpreted this idea as animism." Tyler in about the 1880's. Frazer in about 1900. "Primitive peoples do not mean souls or spirits by their conception of power. But in reality something that the American investigator Lovejoy most aptly termed primitive energetics."
And so we have one side an enormous notion of primitive energetics which is charged. Which is magical. Which is free. and on the other hand. And this is a little quotation from Barbra Hannah in her book Jung His Life and Work, page 83. Speaking of her personal conversations with Jung she writes, "He was however confirmed in his previous convictions. The paramount importance of the individual. And of hearing what he can tell of his past life. And of treating each case differently in the way that suits his psychology." Although it now sounds almost incredible until Freud and Jung saw the importance of the individual story. An individual psychology. No one in psychiatry had dreamed of taking these elements seriously. So that somewhere in this wash of magical primitive energetics is the figure of man, the individual. Who must in some way be emergent, not to say defined yet, but emergent. Or perhaps to use the term that Jung liked to use differentiated. Differentiated. So that the problem essentially, the inertia, the resistance to understanding, the fearfulness involves how does the individual become differentiated if the primordial quality of reality is a charismatic ocean of magical energetics.
Jung gives us one of the best definitions, working definitions of differentiation. It's in Psychological Types. and I'm using all early material here so far. It's on page 539. His definition of differentiation, "Differentiation means the development of differences. The separation of parts from a whole. In this work I employ the concept chiefly in respect to psychological functions." That the differentiation is not purely intellectual. It is not only in the thinking function but all of the functions. Differentiate.
But there's more. So long as even one function is still still so merged with one or more of the other functions, as for example thinking with feeling. or feeling with sensation etc. As to be quite unable to appear alone. Jung says of this that it is an archaic state. Archaic state. And therefore undifferentiated i.e. it is not separated out as a special part from the whole having its own independent existence.
So the problem of the individual differating...differentiating himself from an ocean of primitive magical energetics lies in the complexity of having all of his functions differentiated from one another. so that the individual in order to stand by himself must present an integrated structure in himself. And that it is his individuation, his integrated structure, which then precipitates out of this magical energetics.
This is extremely difficult to keep in mind. It's beautiful intellectually. It's extremely difficult to keep in mind in terms of a life process. And we'll see that the alchemical dictum, the hermetic core is that the art takes the whole man. One cannot practice the art of alchemy without the whole man becoming involved. And so one of the great difficulties then is simply to allow oneself to have, for instance, the thinking function outstrip the other functions. And to understand and understand and understand until one has completely eclipsed your own life basis for participation in a full way. And this of course as Jung would say many times is the condition of modern man. In Modern Man in Search of a Soul in the little chapter The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man he concisely puts it, "The difficulty with us is that we tend to live in a past or a future but not in that existential present. and that it's only here in that present that we may present our fullness and effectively create a life. Otherwise we unravel in fantasies and projections and transferences in a labyrinths. And what takes us in but the magical ocean of energetics."
In looking back upon his life Jung singled out an extremely important event. it was connected with several poignant dreams which he had. The upshot was that he made himself a little mannequin of a figure who had come in a dream. A figure who he says represented to him a number two sort of personality. A deeper personality. A man with a tall black hat and cape and so forth. And not only did he make this little mannequin out of a stick but he took from the Rhine River. A little pebble which he painted so that it had an upper and a lower half and gave this stone to the little mannequin. And when he gave the stone to the mannequin it became charged. And then he hid this mannequin in the attic. And for many many years. Simply forgot that it was there. And then in a moment of great crisis where all of his psyche was called upon to extricate himself. All of it. When it all came forth this figure, this mannequin with the stone was symbolically there in the center of that energy. That is to say there was not only the magical energy but the magical energy became constellated because of an effective image. That at the bottom of every strong feeling tone is an image. And that image functions there, symbolically.
In Jungs's work we have, I'll just put this on very quickly and will not tarry here. I imagine most of you know this. In Jung's work we have a conscious and an unconscious. And in consciousness, the ego. Which is a feeling tone complex in consciousness. And in the unconscious, we have various archetypal forms which collect according to their capacities. And we have a complement which is...I can draw it this way... the shadow. And the inbetween then, eventually we see the structure known as the self.
In new lectures on analytical psychology now some years ago. Michael Fordham in his chapter on reflections on image and symbol gives us this basic outline. which we need just to go over in a cursory manner. We won't dwell on it. the ego can have two main attitudes. Facing the outer world are facing the inner world. Extroverted or introverted. It has at its disposal four modes of functioning. The four functions. Two of them which are rational and percep...ummm conceptual. And two of them which are perceptive and irrational. Sensation and intuition are perceptive. And irrational and the other two rational functions, thinking and feeling. And we should say here that thinking carries a meaningfulness and feeling carries a evaluation. So that we have we have meaning which is generated in thought. And when that meaning is accepted in an integration it becomes truthful. And we have in the feeling function of evaluation. And when that becomes accepted in the integration that has the quality of the real. so that we have for the ego then these functions before functions.
But the problem very early on for Jung was that the ego is incapacitated to act alone. And his first great collected works, The Psychology of the Unconscious, which came out in 1916. This again is not from the collective works but this is the translation by Petrus Hankel. It's interesting this subtitle, A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido: A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought. Jung was aiming at great things. This work forms the basis, in fact it was likened by H.G. Baines who was the translator of psychological types, to the trunk of a tree. And that psychological types was the canopy, the branches of that tree. So that these two books go together. that is to say the psychology the unconscious is the trunk of the tree and the psychological types the functions of the ego are the branches. So that one has a tree of knowledge here. One has an image as it were, a symbolic presentation of it as a tree of knowledge.
For Jung in a sudden decision in 1900 he gave up a very promising medical direction to his life. And accepted almost immediately a position in a mental hospital. The hospital in the Burgholzli Psychiatric Hospital, which was then on the edge of Zurich and now has been swallowed up by the city. From 1900 to 1909 Jung labored there with his patients. And one of the qualities that we get from individuals who were, who saw him at this time is a kind of a Titanic joy of life. A man who smoking his cigars and on the other hand becoming a complete teetotaler. Because he could see that so many of his patients were there on the abuse of alcohol. And for many years Jung could not abide alcohol in any form. Fortunately he, he got back to the fine wines and so forth later in Escada and various places. But the quality of Jung in those years was of a vibrancy which almost transcended any kind of a quality which we would expect to see in someone in this work. Dealing with mental patients day after day there was no depression on Jung's part. There was instead a careful honing of a scientific outlook. And from this Jung in his conscious mode, in his ego development became extremely affable, vivacious, robust. When he left that position he left to become more or less a, a professor, a writer. and came to the United States in 1910.
But it was just a few years later that Jung experienced a complete breakdown of his ego and a psychological inundation of unconscious content. Which he allowed to occur for himself. He was like a courageous explorer and adventurer who had prepared himself for quite some long time and now it was time to enter the ocean. Time to enter in and let himself drop. And it took about five years for Jung to climb out of the situation that is to differentiate himself from the situation. And the document which he made, which he used all that time, which is still not published or translated with, The Red Book. But we have and I'll bring next week some slides of illustrations from The Red Book.
And it was in this time period that Jung began to understand the old hermetic adage that if you are going to understand you must allow yourself to participate fully. For the whole man can only come out of that complete inundation. And we'll see that one of the keys to the alchemical core of Jung's work is not to understand it just intellectually but to follow the way in which he was able to transform having undergone this preparation.
Well let's take a little break and then we'll come back.
**inaudible chatter in the room**
Let's jump back into it. We'll turn this on its side. The diagram we had here in the beginning with the superimposition of the the person coming out of the energies. Let's turn it on its side.
And there needs to be then some way to understand how there is a relationship. How there's a bridge as it were. In fact Jung is very careful to indicate in his early work that these processes are irreversible. That in fact they, they flow one way. That is in his early work this is when he says.
It's difficult to jump into his historical development. So I'll give you something which you may not have seen before as a template for consideration. We have then a primordially we can characterize as nature. But of course it's not bland at all. It's charged. It's oceanic. Its charismatic. The first responsiveness to this is generally not a ritual basis. My original basis, which filters in a selective way so that ritual selects elements from nature and puts them together in a, an imitation, a minuses of a natural cycle. And there are various viewpoints from which this can be done. Not just the hunting and agriculture but there are there are other perspectives. But basically a ritual comportment makes nature handleable because it's selected. It's not everything.
And on the ritual level there is the phenomenon of the mask. Developing from that is myth. Myth. Mythic level or mythic comportment if you like. It is somewhat hierarchy but there is a a kind of a, a gathering of, of capacities and energies here. The mythic level is where language comes into play. Language as an expressible medium. As a, as telling a story. That there's a beginning a middle and an end. There's an expressivity. And the patterning of myths, the patterning of a, of a language tends to assume a very similar kind of configuration to a ritual cycle. Or to a natural cycle. And so whatever, just to be simplistic for a moment, whenever circles are in nature or electives or squares or whatever, are here in rituals in a selective way are here in myth also in a more expressive way.
This targeting, this accumulation, nature, ritual and myth. This accumulation presents increasingly an awareness or a sense of presence of a center of focus. And it's this level is a symbol. A Symbol is an integration. An integration of the qualities which are there in nature or there in ritual or there are myth. Plus those which are appropriated for itself. And so in a way a symbol always have is kind of a basic quaternary to it.
But as Jung would discover the Hermetic path is not a circle but is rather like an infinity sign. It's a different pattern. It's complex. And instead of symbol just coming back to nature it doesn't come back to nature but goes off onto another path or onto another cycle. Those two cycles we can best characterize as magic. That the symbolic present, the integration has a living quality itself. Can create itself. has an energy itself. And radiates this out. creates this. So that a magical realm participates so that along with nature one has magic. So that man the magician is in a parallel with nature. He has his own energies. He has his own magic. And learns expressively to bring this magic into play in such a way that they, the integration of its expression in the world is what we would call art. Or if you like since we're going to talk about alchemy the royal art. Not gold-making but person making.
At the art art stage there is a recognition that what once was a quaternary based on nature now has a transcendent, a transcendental quality to it. That there is in fact a psyche, a quaternary made up of magic, symbol and ritual. That these four make a quaternary. And that they become what we style as the psyche. and the individual who is able through the art to become highly individual, not in terms of still being swallowed by his psyche but being able to oversee the entirety of his psyche as a liberated person. Then has a very special relationship with nature. Then finds that they are in a situation which was first observable between magic and nature now between art and nature. We have two creators. We have man who can creating. Who has a psyche which he is a master of.
And here the development moves into the phase of consciousness that best style history or historical consciousness. One understands that there is a history here. There's a development. It's a sequence of meaning. It's a sequence of value. And since I have been able to do this others are able to do this. And that realm of shared artistry. That world which we make as individuals. There's a history. There's a civilization as a form emerging. Or civilizations as forms emerging there. Which have a curious kind of a parallel to the archetypes in the collective unconscious. They tend to integrate energies also among themselves. And that the movement here in the second quaternary of magic through art and history tends then to want to come back expressively, individually, collectively back to the origins. Back to the beginning. The history historical consciousness seeks to, to develop the fullness of the artistic expressiveness of the person in the world. To see the person in the universe as a whole. And one wishes to come back to nature like the prodigal son. And seeing nature whole. But seeing nature whole it is no longer a magical primitive ocean of energetics but becomes a universe. And it becomes that realm which Jung understood to be science. And that scientific consciousness you're the fulfillment.
If we place these developments in another form we can see that a symbol has a direct relationship to magic. And that myth has a relationship to art. Ritual has a relationship to history. And nature has a relationship to science. It's like a double parking area. Instead of going around twice in parallel, instead of **inaudible 2 words** association, one comes back in a **inaudible 2 words**. This of course is a sacred movement. This entire ensemble is recognizable as a sacred movement. it is in fact the structure for instance of, of the corea of the Greek choral ode. Of the stroh and the anti stroh and the stand. Or the movement, the counter movement and the stand. And what's created by this. What's created by this double quaternary. This eight fold movement is a self which is not only personal, which is individual but also is at home in the universe, is universal. Is paradoxically personal and universal at the same time. And in this structure discovers that this eight fold nature reveals that in between science and nature there is an opening. A presence.
There's the old hermetic discourse that was found in the Nag Hammadi documents. The eighth reveals the ninth. And you can consult your, your volume of Nag Hammadi. And in there the old hermetic doctrine was that the seven levels the heeb damad is the entrapping world. That it's only on the eighth level that one becomes freed from the world powers. The worldly powers. But that the quality of the eighth is that it reveals a silent invisible ninth. Which does not exist like the other eight parts but has a non material existence. It functions but functions via negatia. It functions because its presence in the pause rather than a presence in anything. Or in any structure. Or in any function. Or in any meaning. But that that is not observable at all until the completed work. Hence the alchemical dictum that it is very difficult to complete the work. It is that the entire process is for naught unless the work is completed. Because only by the completion of the form does one then have that Royal observational position of seeing the unformed. Which apparently has all the time been participating as an articulation in the transformations from level to level. That what has been made. What has made possible this entire movement is an articulation because of the unseen. That the the universal background is always operative, is always present, but never in a cognitive way. Only in a recognative way but one has to earn the right for that view. And that view is there for the free individual who is integrated. Who has gone back and fulfilled his harmonic in the universe as a whole. Then one may see this.
So that this entire bridge between the unconscious and the conscious is a structure of the self. So that its development, the history of consciousness, the growth of the self is a complex feature which actually has occurred. Has already occurred many thousands of times over many thousands of years. Is this discoverable simply because one can go to beautiful libraries in Zurich? No. Jung says he discovered it by looking at thousands of patients and looking at the images and the symbols that came up in trying to understand empirically, scientifically what are these? Where are they coming from? That the reality of the unconscious is in fact there all through what we style ask the history of mankind.
So that in Psychological Types before he gets to the psychological types Jung investigates the problem of types in history. And he goes back to the problem of types in the history of classical and medieval thought. Jung does not at this stage in Psychological Types go back into B.C. centuries. Before the common era centuries. He begins interestingly enough with the Gnostics. He begins with the Gnostics and the early church fathers like Tertullian and Aragin(sp?). And in this survey, in this introduction he comes, on page 33 to a very interesting problem here. The problem of transubstantiation. Not transformation but transubstantiation.
Please turn you cassette now. Mister Weir continues on the other side without a break in the continuity.
END OF SIDE 1
Which is important I think for us to consider because when we get into alchemy we have to make this distinction and this differentiation for ourselves all the time. It's easy to do it here on the page before us. It's very difficult to do it in alchemical investigation.
This is Jung writing problem of types in history the problem of transubstantiation. He's talking about the collapse of the Roman Empire. The tremendous upheavals. The psychological upheavals. And the fact that everything seemed to crumble. And about the middle of the ninth century an abbot named Red Birches appeared with the writing upon the Holy Communion in which he advanced the doctrine of transubstantiation. This was in the eight hundreds I believe is around 865, 870 somewhere around there. Transubstantiation the doctrine that the wine and the holy wafer change in communion. That they become in fact the actual blood, the actual body of Christ. Even though it still looks like wine it really is the blood. Even though it still looks like...I'm sure they didn't use a wafer in those days. But the bread is actually the body. This is a medieval, in fact a Carolingian idea that was not there before this.
About 10 or 15 years later the greatest mind in the Carolingian period John Scotus Eriugena, who in his History of Philosophy Father Cobblestone likened to a pinnacle of genius on the plane of many...mediocrity. He's about the only person in the ninth century who could not only read Greek but think in it. And Jung says. Writes here, "Against this doctrine of transubstantiation. against this extreme concretization of a symbol." Saying this is not true. It's not the way to be aware about these processes. It's not the way to think or experience or feel about these processes. And Eriugena, of course, on basing himself on the divine names of Dionysius the Areopagite. Jung doesn't go into that here, but that was the basis of his understanding and then his own genius. But Jung writes in here, "Against this extreme concretization of a symbol."
An abbot of Malmesbury, the John Scotus Eriugena argued that this simply is not the way to understand this. That the communion is in fact a commemoration of the Last Supper which Jesus celebrated with his disciples. Of Jung, but Jung you writes, in which the reasonable man of every age will participate. It was, it was a commemoration. It is a commemoration. But Scotus Eriugena, although clear and humanly simple in his thoughts. And well disposed to detract from the meaning and value of the sacred ceremony, was not at one with the spirit of his time and the desires of the world around him. He was incidentally killed in the same way that Hypatia was killed in ancient, ancient Alexandria. His students pounced upon him and stabbed him to death with their their pens. We don't issue pens.
This is to take the symbolical and to coursen it. To make it referential. not to, not to work with it symbolically but to work with it on just a parallel of functions. the thinking function and the sensation function. Undifferentiated. It is not a sign of wholeness at all. Sign of having those, those functions in fact rather controlled. Submerged by unconscious complexes. That there are not only complexes like the ego and consciousness but there are complexes in the unconscious. Or as he would use the phrase feeling toned complexes. They always have very powerful feeling. Emotional feeling tone. And this tone is like the string, like the thread which holds together all of the images. And holds them into a unity. So that it acts, Jung will say, with autonomy. But just as the ego acts with autonomy it does not really have control of the whole psyche. It does not have any real control of the world. it does not have any real control of someone else.
And so there is in this quality of coming to, of coming back into individuation. There's a quality always of feeling isolated. As one makes progress, if we can use that term, advisement. As one participates in the individuation process there is concomitant, a feeling tone, that comes out of isolation. And that the individual needs to get used to the taste of solitude. That's essential quality of the self wholesomeness of the individuated person.
Not only does this isolation come up then for one's own sense of person. But in the differentiation process each of the functions in all of their variations. Introverted or extroverted. All of the differentiation that goes on there. Each of those functions is also prone to the sense of isolation. So that differentiation becomes more and more a challenge to one's courage. Just to put it bluntly.
In Chapter two of Psychological Types, Jung comes to one of the great geniuses of about 200 years ago. The age of revolution as many writers have styled it. A contemporary of Jefferson and Beethoven, Hegel, Goethe. His name was Schiller. Friedrich Schiller. And Jung uses from Schiller, not any of his great poems. Schiller wrote an Ode To Joy which Beethoven used in the ninth symphony, for instance. Instead Jung turns to a very poignant esthetic treatise of Schiller. Which was is entitled in translation On the Aesthetic Education of Man. And I think it's still in print in paperback. Very powerful presentation. Jung writes, "So far as my somewhat limited range extends Friedrich Schiller seems to have been the first to have made any considerable attempt at a conscious discrimination of typical attitudes. And to have developed a fairly complete presentation of the singularities."
And in fact in The Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller in trying to sort out which of the functions of man participate in aesthetic judgment. This was a big question at the time because of Kahn's(?) writings and so forth. What are the mental functions? And because he was a great poet, what are the functions of man as a universal spirit? He not only thinks, he feels, he has his dreams and so forth. and Schiller lays it out. And Jung writes, "Schiller's essay by the depth of its saa....of thought, the psychological penetration of its material and its wide vision of the possibility of a psychological solution." Schiller is the first to understand quite consciously and clearly that though this is a very complex situation. That the problem is fraught with entanglements. that the solution lies in a psychological understanding of men. And Jung writes, "The merit due to Schiller from our psychological viewpoint, as will become clear in our further discussion, is by no means inconsiderable. For he gives us development...developed points of view which we as psychologists are just beginning to appreciate. And he goes on with Schiller in the type problem.
But in dealing with this in. dealing with Schiller's presentation of the types Jung also because he is sensitive to the way in which he is working. He's sensitive to the material. He becomes sensitive to the fact that Schiller's medium, poetry, has in fact very powerful effect upon our understanding of this. In particular because poetry, art. poetry is not a mythic language but as an art language. See. It's able to take the the integrated psyche from the magic the symbol the myths and the rituals integrated together to express it together. Which is what the Ode to Joy expresses. That at this level man steps free ready to be in this universe as himself. Not just as the emissary of some capacity of himself. but as the the master of his soul as it were.
And Jung then after considering Schiller in the type problem moves to the type problem in poetry. Especially the significance of the reconciling symbol. My little reconciling symbol. The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
A midsummer present from my wife. Such gentle criticism has to be accepted.
Comment from the room: **inaudible 1 word** for leprechaun.
So we have this, the significance of the reconciling symbol. What holds art together? What holds the aesthetic experience together for Schiller? And Jung understands this. Is that the symbol comes into play. It's not just it's not just hidden within. It's not just a secret self. It's not just a medium between the unconscious and one's conscious. But that it has moved out into this world expressively in the art. So the symbol has been delivered from within. From the internalized integration to an integration which now appears expressively through art in the world. In, in fact this whole play the self now comes into play in the world. The significance of the reconciling symbol, and I won't go into it because of time here. But he uses a Prometheus a great deal in here. Because fire is extremely important to it.
And we'll see in alchemy the symbol here, the process is of the refining fire. Not the fire which burns too low to keep the process going. Nor the fire which burns to pot which scorches any stage. But the refining fire is a constancy. And of course one of the, one of the great religious presentations of this symbol will be the flame on the heart. This was the way that that the early Rosicrucians in the late 15th uh 16th century would have presented it. did in fact present it. That the refining fine takes this continuity, makes of this transforming process a continuity that the stages that are there. Which are in, which are in reality discrete. they're separate. They are articulate. but they are, in truth, linked together through a continuity because of the refining fire. And we'll see that this is extremely important in alchemy. And almost all the alchemical tracks that are worthwhile caution the, the operator. the one who's operating with art and nature together, to also keep a a third quality. Which sometimes symbolized as praying alone in the laboratory. Of keeping one sense of the refining fire of the continuity which even though for all the world it looks like these discrete processes do not touch. There's no way physically that it can happen. Yet it does happen. And it happens because of the continuity. Because of the truth which is present there because of, of the alchemist who is there. the constant presencing of the magician and not the ingredients are what transform.
Jung talks about this. And then in the same chapter on the type problem in poetry goes to India. And he goes at this time. This is very early in Jung. He goes to talking about brahma. And then the reconciling symbol as a principle of dynamic regulation. And then comes to this statement, "Like physical energy libido passes, libido passes through every conceivable transformation we find apple..ample evidence of this in the fantasies of the unconscious and in the myths. These fantasies are primarily self representations of the energetic transformation processes which follow their natural and established laws. They're determined way of evolution." And he brings in here not only that is there Brahma but there is and he uses the translation Rita, the right way. the law. The right way of transformation.
Towards the end of the chapter. And this isn't psychological type still very early on. There's a small section D on the reconciling symbol and Chinese philosophy. But one sees here that Jung is limited. He's out of his field he writes about page and a half on the dao but immediately goes into associations. He writes, "the idea of a middle path that lies between the opposites is also found in China in the form of Dao. The idea of Dao was usually associated with the name of the philosopher Lao Tzu, born 604. But this concept is older than the philosophy of Lao Tzu since it is bound up with certain ideas blowing into the ancient national religion of the dao. The celestial way. This concept corresponds with the Vedic redao(?). The meanings of Dao the way the method principle and so forth."
But one can see that Jung at this stage does not have acquaintance with Chinese thought more with the dao. That's yet to come. And we'll see it in our sequence. He will, for instance, through Richard Wilhelm come to understand the five phase energy process in the dao. That as Lao Tzu says, I think it's in chapter 38, that the dao begets the one. And the one begets the two. And the two begets the three. And the three to ten thousand things. That one has unity and duality and a trinity process which produces multiplicity. But that the base of this transformation sequence is not one but zero. That the dao is the beginning. And when you have a zero base transformation sequence everything is resolvable back into zero. The multiplicity is able to come back. The multiplicity raised to infinity is able to come back and to zero. So that there's an ecology. There's an eternal movement. But the Dao which can be named is not the eternal dao. So Jung is yet to come into contact with this more informed level of presentation. which he will.
And we'll see that when he does come back into contact with it it will be a great discovery for him. Because he will by that time by the late 1920's he will have discovered for himself in his own life process. In his own Western practice. All of the understandings and all of the principles so that when he gets the story straight from Richard Wilhelm, he will see that the Chinese confirm exactly what he had discovered himself independently. Had discovered in the psyches of modern Western man independently. That somehow the ancient Chinese consciousness was linked, is linked, is tied up to the modern Western consciousness.
And this will become a very big issue for for Jung towards the end of his life. What is the world history of the psyche? What is the world history of alchemy? The alchemy is one of the few contacts throughout the entire world, throughout several thousand years of history. And we'll see that in fact towards the end this will be developed by Joseph Needham in Science and Civilization in China. And when we bring in Mysterium Coniunctionis, will bring in some of Needham's writings from from his work at the same time.
We're running a little late but I want to come back to this. I want to come back to differentiation. The guideline which we will have to keep before us all the time as we go through the sequence of stages. And in order to make the stages somewhat discreet. That is articulable. I've taken the works in historical order as they were written. And we'll start next week with the Seven Sermons of the Dead. And work our way step by step, work by work, all the way through to Mysterium Coniunctionis. A journey of about 40 years of discovery and wonderment.
Differentiation is not a concept for Jung. It's what the Ming Dynasty Chinese would call the only working principle. It's the lead. It's the only functioning principle that will work all the time. So that as far as consciousness is concerned its continuity, its refining fire is to keep alive the functioning of differentiation. It's the key to the individuation process. One of the tasks with which the alchem...alchemists and the alchemical documents stress implicitly through all of the garbled recipes. Through all of the cribbed and cramped of rhetoric. Is to keep the alchemist alert. Don't take anything for granted. You're not just following some recipie. There is no recipe. that in every single case is individual. That there are surprises. There are weird turns. There are undiscovered aspects all the time. And you, if you think that there is any kind of a repetition here its then in that lulled habitual state that you will surely fail. So the crypt language is always an indication. Always a fatherly reminder, be alert. Or as they would say be prepared to be prepared.
We'll come back next week and we'll look at the Seven Sermons of the Dead. Thank you.
END OF RECORDING