Seminars on Dream Analysis (1928-1930)
Presented on: Thursday, July 23, 1987
Presented by: Roger Weir
The Alchemical Core of C. G. Jung's Work (1916-1956)
Presentation 4 of 13
Seminars on Dream Analysis (1928-1930)
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, July 23, 1987
Transcript:
The date is July 23rd 1987. This is the fourth lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir on the Alchemical Core of Jung's work at the Philosophical Research Society. Tonight's lecture is entitled seminars on dream analysis, 1928 to 1930.
Those of you who have looked at the schedule of lectures have noted that there is a purposeful major deletion from the sequence. And that is the book known as The Secret of the Golden Flower. And I have not put the book into sequence because it figures in a, if I may use the term, in a mystical way throughout the entire sequence. And therefore cannot be designated at any particular stage of the sequence but rather forms a thread. A thread of unity flowing through all of them.
I will try at the beginning, before the lecture gets going and proceeds, to give you some rule of thumb, useful techniques and some information that are not able to be had too easily. Last week as a general technique, as a rule of thumb as it were, I reminded those of you who know. And surprise those of you who don't that in Chinese thought there is always a a fluid succession, a progression of approach. That is to say one could delineate it as a succession, as a fluid procession initially. but that after a while it begins to operate spontaneously as a whole. As a pattern. And does not offer itself to consciousness as a delineating phase form progressive feature. But rather operates instantaneously. It's rather like the process that once you have laboriously learned to type you no longer think of the letters on the keys but you simply move your hands. And the fact that the keys on the board are not in an alphabetical order but are arranged for convenience of the muscular movement. that is to say, to look at a typewriter key pattern it's not at all in the same sequence that the alphabet is. But having learned this other mobility one can type extraordinarily fast. So that the the Taoist sense of process is so ingrained, as it were, into the Chinese psyche that the differentiation of it is extremely impossible to come by.
The faith forum process runs in a five-part movement. And the best articulation is in The Doa De Jing by Lao Tzu. And it runs something, if we could be a numberical sequence of it, from zero, one, two, three, and mulitplicity. And that the zero base number is the Dao. It is unnamed. It is unnumbered. It is undesignated. But nevertheless functions as the initial movement. The comes unity. And the unity would be simple, a symbolized or could be symbolized by the taiji. That is to say we could in place of the one simply give it the classical form of the taiji. Taiji as the unity. Zero base Dao has no designation at all. But the Dao as the unity has a symbolic designation in the taiji.
The second phase of visiblity and the third phase of the movement is the stage of yin and yang. That is to say, say there is a bifurcation. For the bifurcation which is always in every instance contingent upon the unity. The unity carries itself over so that the bifurcated elements are complementaries and operate as polarities only provisionally. The polarized understanding is a delegated value. But the complementariness is an indigenous meaningfulness to the form.
And from, from the yin and the yang from two one that has the third visible movement that the fourth movement, this notion this archetypal form of of the triad. Of the straight of the triangle if you like. And that the truthfulness of the triad is that it is creative. It is able to engender. And Lao Tzu says from the one comes the two. And from the two the three. And from the three, the many things. A Chinese phrase is the ten thousand things meaning an indefinite number. Meaning a matrix of indefinite numbered fullness. If I can use that term. Which we could designate as infinity.
That is to say the fifth movement, the fourth visible. The fourth part of the quaternary which we can see, would be an infinity. It would be an indefinite multiplicity except for the fact that the multiplicity is always governed by the forming power of the triad. Of that triadic capacity. And that triadic capacity comes from man.
And in a way, in a very real way, one can only have an infinity of multitude in the Daoist ecology of energy, if the three allows for this. But the three in its stead is necessarily contingent upon the way in which the two is oriented. If the two is oriented in terms of the Dao and not in terms of the unity then this middle turn
Will allow for the infinity to come out. And the Infinity being is able to be factored as infinity back into the Dao. Back into the zero. So that there's a continuous ecology of movements. Seamless. Which is broken only here at the center of the five phase energy process. And this is in the nature of man. So that man here is the bridge between heaven and earth. And the Dao of heaven is spontaneity. and Lao Tzu says this in several different ways. And it's a carried on through throughout Chinese history intact regardless of how changed or misunderstood or understood the rest of the Dao de Jing will be.
So the problem here for the smooth flow of the dao is for man to participate. But at the very crux, if I can use that term. At the right crux where he must participate in the ecology of the dao he has a tendency to differentiate. And he has very good reason to differentiate because he has proof in his own nature that the very essence of his understanding is in terms of differentiation. And particularly in terms of differentiation in terms of yin and yang. And the sense of differentiation here between yin and yang approaches that kind of polarity that we talked about before which in Western thought is a Permenidion polarity. Mutually exclusive and never the twain shall meet. So that the interchange between that kind of a polarity is in terms of tension. So the two poles of a polarity do not meet and therein resides the dynamic. So that the the creative field as it were of engendering is the tension. Is tension. Is energy as tension.
But in Chinese thought this is not so. Or whether it's can see it conceived to be naive to suppose that it is so. Except in very provisional terms. To the Chinese Daoist sense the very polarized terms either penetrate. And thus in a very real necessary way constitute an inseparable unity. Which is guaranteed not by the quality of oneness but guaranteed by the quality of the Dao. Which has no number whatsoever. So that the unity is not on the basis of one but on the basis of what we would designate now as zero. This is very difficult to conceive of. and in fact it denies conceivability.
So I've put on the board just a basic little refresher. Little rules of thumb of how to keep track of why this is so in some approachable terms. The yin is designated as a broken line. The yang is an unbroken line. That is to say in this pictorial graphic representation we can designate it that way. You could think of yang as a movement and yen as a pause. Movement and stillness. And in fact there are many ways in which this is a much more adequate presentation of Yang and Yin.
But yin and yang occur not just as an unbroken and a broken line, but they occur in an expressive ecology which is always implicit in their being there. And the basic rule of conception is that in order for a form to be determined. Even a form which is technically a stillness like yin. One must have a background context against which that form is seen. So the form always is presented with its context. So when you're talking of yin and yang you're talking of four items all the time. Not only of yin and yang but of the context in which yin occurs and which yang occurs.
And the classic Chinese way of presenting this is in terms of a triad of movement. In this trigram the yin line is at the bottom of the tree. in the middle of the progression the yin line is moved to the center of the tree. And in the third round it is moved to the top of the tree. So that there are always two yang lines in the presentation of the yin line making the trigram. So that the trigram are not developments from the basic line and broken line, but they are primordial concomitant with those expressions. So that the trigrams are primordial. That is to say even mythologically in the Chinese understanding there never was a single unbroken line and a matching broken line. That the originator of the trigrams the mythical Fu Shee(sp?), whose the originator of Chinese civilization some 5,000 years ago, saw not the lines but saw the trigram. Because it was only in context of the trigrams that the nature of the yin and the yang lines could be seen at all. And the nature is that they are always moving. It's like the old conception of the shells of the atom having various electrons and so forth. And they jump from shell to shell. It isn't so that they jump from shell the shell, but it works as if they did. And the same way here. It works this way.
And just as there is a progression of the yen in this way there is white lines in every faction. White lines in progression of the yen line. So that in these progressions, when the progressions are full out of this triad comes a forth. This is a basic, if I may, an aqua principle. Three call forth the invisible forth. Four expressions. And the quatenary calls forth the primordial yang which takes the line out of each of the three trigrams and puts it together. Makes the essence, the abstracted essence, of the whole progression appear as a manifestation. You have to use that term. So that the, this trigram presents the end. Not a single unbroken line but three together as that trigram. And it's that trigram done which is symbolic of the receptive. not a single line but the trigram.
The same is true for the yang. But again the forth element is somewhat...we have to use this wavy line. Is somewhat symbolically cut off from the fact that there's a progression of three movements. In the middle of this progression of each one, this trigram and this trigram are mysterious. In fact they are the trigrams for water and fire. The two universal solvents, water and fire. And the peculiar nature of a solvent is that it will dissolve the other form into itself. So that water seems to want to dissolve this progression into itself. And in doing so act as if it were in this progression. And fire likewise as though it acts as if it were in this progression. And so this and this, these two dots, the one in the middle of the other are these trigrams working this progression.
So the symbol of the taiji always has in the center at the other its opposite. But not opposite in polarity terms. And only provisionally opposite in complementarity. But actually indicating that there is a unity which transcends the oneness. Which goes back to the zero base. That is to say the transformation does not happen in terms of unity but happens in terms of nothingness. Which of course makes it mysterious to the logical mind. The thinking process by its nature cannot conceive of this. In fact refuses to conceive of this. East and West. So that one has to in a very interesting way lay a trap for the mind so that it cannot but help realize this.
And that's the whole nature of alchemy as we will see. That the phenomenal world is used to demonstrate to the mind that transformation never takes place in terms of phenomenon. But it takes place in terms of an undifferentiated continuum which lies beneath and above energy. Now this is very very surprising to the mind. to the thinking function. And the psyche especially that's differentiated itself in terms of thinking, it's exactly this process which is most occult to it. Which is most unknown. So that alchemy of all the processes in the world is the least amenable to thought. And the most essential to correct thinking. Because without that realization, without that fundament, thought goes astray, begins to tyrannize the rest of the functions of the person and takes charge of the individual. Instead of having a fullness of development we have people who are cripples in terms of the other functions. Especially fear. Which is on the other from, from thinking. or if you wish the feminine Sensibility.
I won't go into The Secret of the Global Flower now but we'll bring it back next week and develop this even further.
One thing you have to understand here is basic, the basic occult principle that three a triad calls forth a balancing quaternary. Calls forth the fourth. That the triad is stable in itself but in relationship to its context it calls forth some other fourth. And it's this basic need, this archetypal need. It's not the need of a person or anything it's an archetypal imbalance. The form of the triad is stable by itself but does not exist in isolation. It's always in some context and so that fourth element is the context.
So if the basic triadic structure
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here calls for a balance and these two triads come together and they form this kind of a hexagram structure. So that the hexagram
is the next step of development from the trigram. And that the trigram because it is stable in terms of universal context then throws the progression back internally. So that there's a development internally then and not further out. One doesn't have then two hexagrams coming together. And this is a very primordial kind of a form that's going on here in Daoism. And in its expression in the I Ching.
A major change in Chinese civilization happened about 1100 B.C. And that is that the hexagramal orbit, the whole archetypal structure of it was seen to have an alternative shape. And the geniuses who saw this work from the Duke of Zhou and King Wen. The Duke of Zhou and King Wen made a different order. Made an order based upon man's perspective rather than the previous heavenly perspective. So that there was a Fu Shi presentation of the way in which one could symbolize the universe in terms of these trigrams and hexagrams. And then about 1100 B.C. there was a revolution in thought. and there was an understanding that one could work from the personal based perspective. And Lao Tzu comes out of the development of King Wen and the Duke of Zhou. So the Dao de Jing is a development and that leads to alchemy.
In the Fu Shi. Fu shi order it is cosmological and it is so balanced that there is no chance to see the riches of using an imperfection and transforming. Whereas from man's perspective it was understood that the imperfections seemingly are beneficent. Because it allows them for man to develop an art which completes nature. So that in the cosmological understanding there was no need for human art. There was only the need for man to understand the universe as it is. But in the human based perspective we were seen to be the need to develop an art of man contributing what he essentially is to this universe. And that by taking the Duke of Zhou and King Wen's cycle and adding man's art to that one then has the cosmological principle with man as an active participant.
In the Fu Shi diagram the Daoist energy cycle only works if the middle term is also a zero. If man learns to flow with the Dao and not interfere with it. So that the one in the three work in terms of the Dao and infinity. And that only by taking himself out of the cycle does the cycle work. Whereas the man based the understanding was that there is a way, mysterious as it seems, for a man to participate in this ecology actively and not just to learn to sit out. Not just to get out of the way. Not just to equalize himself and neuter himself. Which was the classic wisdom understanding. But how to make his participation in such a balanced way that the prism of his beauty participates. Not as a zero but as an infinity also there. And so man learning the art of having infinite capacity also participates in this ecology. And we'll see that this is in fact the problem which is broached in alchemy.
And the basic problem. The basic trigger on man's intuit capacities is for him to learn how to transform. How to change. And once you master that then in order, whatever order you wish, all things may be changed and transformed. They're all amenable to transformation. Including himself. And the man who understands that then he's able to see that caught up a bonus of the alchemical peacock with its the tail raised. The many colors. The coat of many colors in the alchemy was able to see in that stage. The presage of his own infinite capacity. And he participates wholly instead of taking himself wholly out of it. and in this way East and West meet and touch each other. Very much like the two circles of the taiji.
Apropos to this. it's imperative to understand that a new thought. The persona. the mask is not so much a mask of your ego but is indeed surprisingly a mask, a persona, of the unconscious. That that face which you thought that you were presenting to the world is a mask for your egotistical self. One has to transform. One has to shift that perspective and see that that face does not belong to the ego but it belongs to your, your unconscious energies. And presents in fact a very real person. And that's the soul, the anima with that internal persona presents consciousness. And even though it's in unconsciousness, seemingly, is that the mask, the face, the persona of consciousness. And in a very mysterious way the soul and the persona. The anima or animous and the persona are the way by
which energy is exchanged in this dynamic.
And we'll see that for Jung coming upon this was extraordinarily eventful for him. If you wish to a consult for yourselves in the collected works, Volume Seven. two essays on analytical psychology, the persona is a segment of the collective psyche is on page 154. And you can go into this but there is an awful lot more to be seen.
We left Jung off last week having written The Seven Sermons to the Dead in 1916. And in that year was founded the psychological Club in Zurich. and we're going to take Jung now up to about 1930. Up to about the time that The Secret of the Golden Flower is first published and brought out. And what we're using as a keynote for ourselves tonight is the volume which came out just a couple of years ago entitled Dream Analysis. Or Seminar on Dream Analysis. And this is the first time it's ever been published, 1984. Notes of the seminar given in 1928 and 1930 by Jung at the psychological Club in Zurich. And this building was purchased for Jung in Zurich. And there were about 50 to 60 people that took part in the seminar. And in the seminar a series of dreams are analyzed and presented. And I've excerpted for you some of the, some of the structure at the beginning of the work. And then I want to show you some of its significance in terms of Jung's development.
At this time Jung himself testified, this was 1928, that he had been analyzing dreams at the rate of 2000 per year for some 25 years. So that by the time these seminars were given he had analyzed somewhere around 50,000 dreams by his own estimate. Which means that in his career he probably analyzed over a hundred thousand dreams. Just the massive information basis is staggering.
The ABCs are like this. The psyche is energy. It is energy. And that it's basic movement is from the unknown to the known. The basic movement. And that this movement in some real way is mediated by symbols. Whether the symbols are their primordially or whether they're engendered is a moot point at this particular stage. But Jung is understanding that the symbols are essential to this movement. To the psychology. So that without the taiji, there's no way for that energy to move. Without the taiji as a symbol there's no way for it to move. That somehow consciousness is dependent upon a symbolic fulcrum.
And I put on the board last week a little diagram showing how the movement from nature through ritual and through myth comes to a culmination in symbolic integration. That there's a movement of progressive interiorization of nature. From nature through a ritual selection to a mythic descriptiveness. And charging it with meaning to an interiorization of all of those processes is a symbolic integration. And that that integration is charged as it were. Charged in the sense then that is able to, the symbol, the symbolic level, is able to radiate out a meaningfulness. An energy which is meaningful. And that this radiation is a magical realm. And it's characterized by energy which has a strong polarity which is able then to be reintegrated in the world. So that in between the symbol and further developments of consciousness is a level which we could understand as art. And that alchemy is the primordial art of reintegrating this energy which comes from our symbolic cells. Through a magical realm not just nature but nature with something else in play there. And that art brings it back together complementing and completing nature. And so we'll see that alchemy as a process is extremely sensitive to how we understand symbols.
One little guide that I have found useful through the years is to understand that consciousness is somewhat always a structural form. And that unconsciousness is always somewhat an energy type. The energy comes in, in types. Archaeic types. So that in the interchange, in the transformation, one is trying essentially to understand energy forms in structural types. And that it is the juggling balance. The magician. The juggler is primordial stage or quality of personality was able to handle energy forms and structural types.
Jung uses a couple of terms from Swahili, the African language, in order to differentiate dreams. and the editors of the book have corrected Jung. And obviously he's, he was either misheard or he misspelled. the terms the first term is Ota. O-T-A. which means in Swahili a great vision. And one of the characteristics of a great vision, a very big important dream is that only people who have mana have these kinds of dreams. Only the chief or the medicine man or somebody who is highly charged by whatever powers there are. Only someone who has mana has an ota. has a large dream. And that regular dreams are called, according to Jung, vudota. And apparently the swahili word for just dreams in general is ndoto. Ndoto. But Jung used the the term spelled vudota. These are ordinary small dreams that everyone has. So no one particularly needs to talk about them. and we could just forget about them and so forth. And this of course is a way of defending one's consciousness oneself against the incursions from the unconscious.
In dreams Jung says that whenever there are imaginary figures or imaginary situations they almost always then refer to the dreamer. They are personal elements. That in the dream they're imaginary but they refer back to the dreamer. And in a kind of a convex way then the personal is not ever symbolized in dreams. That in fact if there's a symbolic activity working it's an indication that this is something far away from the person. Far away from the dreamer. And that fantasy material then tends to collect itself around the symbolic figures or symbolic events in a dream. But that if one dreams of one's brother or one's wife or so forth that this is an indication that the dreamer should understand that should take this in tangible terms. So that there's a mix of symbolic and tangible. And that the way in which the, the dream energy functions the personal element is an imaginary quality in the dream realm. Whereas in the waking realm of course the fantasy material seems to be imaginary. So there's that kind of, of a mix.
Where is the fulcrum? Where's the exchange fulcrum? between the symbol and the quintessence of the person. That's where the exchange. That's where the imaginary and the fantasy collect and reality is able to be established. So that dreams then express certain processes in our unconsciousness. The images are symbolic or unconscious representations of our own complexes. Or as we have learned to call them from Jung know feeling toned complexes. And because of this the feeling tone complexes in consciousness obscure the psyche. Where they are functioning there's an obscurity. There is in fact a kind of a blindness. that emotion seems to hide objectivity in man.
Then Jung says that it's quite the opposite with women. Because women need emotion. The woman in fact without emotion is blinded in exactly the same way as a man who has this emotion. So that's for Jung in the psyche man relies upon thinking as a defining function. and women rely upon feeling as a defining function.
Now there's an interesting quotation that I might give you from the great American philosopher Suzanne Langer in the author of Philosophy in a New Key. And one of her last great probing essays on the mysteries of art, she wrote that she was scouting the possibility that feeling was an elaboration of thinking. And this of course is exactly the most startling kind of revelation to, to late 20th century man. for whom he would be hard-pressed to imagine that feeling could be a further refining of thought. And yet as Jung points out, the intelligibility of music indicates that this might well be so. So there's a there's a lot to be said in these terms.
Jung then emphasizes that in a woman's psychology her emotions are always purposive. They always have a purpose. Whereas in man, in men's psychology, man's psychology, the emotions are what he calls in The Dream Seminar, he says they're like a natural product. they're purposelessness. That they don't particularly occur with any kind of a bias or any kind of an intentionality. But they occur as a natural product. They're there. But they don't necessarily then lead somewhere. And that's the converse of this is that in women mind seems to be a natural product. mind as the vehicle of the thinking process tends to have a kind of an innocence. It's there and does not always have what a man's mind always has. As his thinking always is purposive. It's always leading somewhere. Going somewhere.
Then he uses a strange image. He says that for a man his mind is like his womb. That his creativity comes from his mind. Well of course for a woman her, her womb is her creativity. And he says that in the relationship then, in human psychology, there's this kind of a polarity of creativity. And that it's, it was almost inevitable in early psychoanalytic development to see either one of these two polarities. Either sexuality or will to power as the focus.
But Jung says that it was due to his personal experience with himself. And with certain experiences that happened to him. He says somewhere in The Seminars that the first time he ever experienced an occult phenomenon in a laboratory was with his professor friend Uganda Bueller. He said he was, Bueller was dumbfounded that this particular occult occurrence had happened. And Jung said he felt quite at home. It was like old familiar terrain and he wasn't surprised at all. And that's when he knew that there were recognition centres operative in him. He understood that it isn't sexuality and it isn't power. But that they operate in a larger unity which is the wholeness of the person. Which seeks to express itself sometimes this way, sometimes that way, sometimes in a completely different way. And so for Jung it's the sense of individuation of the search for, for wholeness. the wholeness of the psyche.
And of course for Jung as a westerner here, he for a long time understood wholeness as unity. And it took a great surprise on his part to understand that wholeness is not in terms of one but in terms of the infinite nothingness. That this is a wholeness indeed.
We'll take a little break.
Some of you might be interested that on Sunday August the 9th I'll be giving the lecture in place of Mr. Hong. The lecture on Neoplatonism and the quest for selflessness. I think that the title. So that'll be on Sunday August 9th. He's alright. He's just is taking a well-earned vacation. Working on the Christmas book.
**inaudible question from the room**
No he won't.
The Christmas book is going to be something like jokes from antiquity. I don't know if you know or not but he's the greatest raconteur of jokes there is. Let's see I don't know if I should tell this. I guess I could tell this. Here is the latest. A very young boy is talking to his grandmother and we break in on the conversation. And he says so grandma the stork brought me. And she said that's right. and he puzzled over this a minute. And he said well, well then did the stork bring mommy and daddy. She said oh yes. And he eyed her for a moment and he said well grandma, did the stork bring you? She said yes. He said well that means there's been no sex for three generations.
He's alright. He's healthy. Don't worry about him.
You know in the, in the world of alchemy there are two great, two great horizons. Which are like coordinates that finally interpenetrate. And one of them is the interior development, the psychological development. And the other is the the historical, the cultural. And just as Carl Jung is really masterful in the 20th century about the internal, the psychological, in relation to alchemy. Well our Mr. Hall is masterful in terms of the way in which civilization and alchemy relate. He...It sounds strange I know because he's so near. But he's that kind of a great figure. He's a world-class figure. And one of the works he's been working on for oh sixty-five years. He's doing a series which will be completed in 15 books. 11 of them are published and they're two more to come out and then two more to be written. Which will be a complete cycle of the adepts of all ages in all times. Which will be a development of a different order.
You know the great book The Secret Teachings of all Ages is about symbolic philosophy. But the adepts are the people, the human beings, who have throughout the ages world round who have labored to bring wisdom to its fullness. And Mr. Hall is really the, the king of that mountain. He's really the master of that technique. And he means to complete it. And there are two more books to be written. One of them he's just starting thinking about now is on the the adepts of the primordial world. And Africa, Australia Aborigines and so forth. And so he's, he's sinking into that. And his great capaciousness and thinking about that. And feeling that out. So a lot of what he's doing now I think is setting himself to bring this long life's work to fruition.
Sort of analogous to Mr Hall's lifelong work was Goethe's writing a Faust. It took him over sixty years of his life to write. And many times. Even with his tremendous intellect. Goethe was one of these individuals, I read somewhere once they estimated his IQ at about 200. And there were portions of it, there were movements in in Faust that he could not master intellectually. He had to open himself up to life experiences in order to master. In the second part of Faust is the grand archetypal world. And Jung used Faust quite often as a reference for himself. Especially when he was delving into the chaos of alchemical symbols. the way that they had come down to us.
I thought you might like to hear just a couple of lines from the beginning of Faust part two. This is Faustus stretched out in a flowery meadow. He's weary and restless. He's longing for sleep. It's twilight and there's a ring of spirits and swaying movement in little graceful forms. And one of the spirits to the company of an alien heart named Ariel, singing. "When the pedals like sweet rain deck the earth with fluttering spring. When the fields are green again and to men their blessing bring. Then the little elves, great souled, haste to help if help they can. Saint or sinner for they hold parts compassion for each luckless man. yet who surrounds this head in airy wheeling show now the noble elfin power of healing. Soothe now the tumult of this mortal heart and wash away the stain of horrors past. The self-reproach remove the bitterest heart. And in the nights for vigils, give at last this soul the comfort pity can empart. Pillow his head upon the sweet cool lawn. And bathe his lens with dew from letha's Lee(?). soon the cramp stricken frame will light some be. With strength renew to sleep to meet the dawn. Fulfilled o elves your lovely task aright and lead him back restored to heavenly light."
You might if you get a chance to look at the second part of Faust at the beginning of act 5. And you will find in act 5 at the beginning Jung's own personal tutelary spirit. That was the phrase that Plotinus used to use. The tutelary spirit. The guardian spirit. And Philemon was the guardian spirit. and he appears here, here at the very end of Faust, part II.
And in fact when he built his home, the Bollingen, Bullington tower Jung carved over the doorway in translation from the German, "Sanctuary of Philemon penitence of Faust." And in a very real way Goethe had set a challenge, a particular challenge, to the European psyche by writing Faust. Both parts. And Jung in the most comprehensive, strategic way conceived of his individual work as the necessary individuated response to that massive challenge. That great plan of man trying to finally understand through the science of alchemy. Through the science of transformation, the art of life. And so there's a very real kind of a connection there.
I must say and perhaps mentioned to you that you probably realize this, have read this, know this. But for Jung coming out of the personal confrontation with his unconscious, the healing realization for him was that the self manifests itself in mandalas. That when the self is healthy. When it's restored. it isn't an equipoise that's then dead in the water. It isn't a boring kind of stability. But it's the universal dynamic which then expresses itself in wholes. Wholenesses. That with what the person energized and transformed and brought back to their deepest self does is they make wholenesses is in this world. And the mandala is the, the simple symbolic cross-section of this expression of wholenesses. In one of the expressions. One of the mandalas. The mandala in fact for Jung, was to build his house. Bollingen. Not his house in Zurich. not in Cusco. But about 20 miles south on the shore of the lake. He originally wanted to buy an island that was out in the lake. And the deal fell through. and in late 1922 he finally brought this property. It stretches a little bit more than a mile from the lakeshore to a rail line. And in fact Barbra Hanna in her book on Jung says that the train track takes a sharp turn here. So that just as you come into the entrance of Jung's property there's always the possibility that suddenly the train will be there.
Please turn your cassette now and it will commence playing on the other side after a brief pause.
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...in a way that suddenly the train will be there. And it's a very dangerous crossing. And after Jung died they built a roadway over the tracks so that visitors could come to Bollingen in safety. But while he was alive the old man would not let them take the perilous crossing away. Because Bollingen for him was his mandala. That's where he lived. And as a matter of fact it's interesting to see how Bollingen transformed. His initial vision of Bollingen was that he wanted for himself to build with his own hands out of stone an African Hut. A simple hearth surrounded by stone walls. And that was the the vision in the Bollingen tower the beginnings of the tower came in that form. The reason being that it was on one of his African trips in 1925, when he was in Kenya. What was then Kenya. That he experienced the penetrating occult energy of the archetype of Horus. And it it touched him. He said that several times in interviews and in his collected works he said it was one of two times in his life where he was touched to the bone over the the penetrating quality of reality. That it happened at sunrise. and he would get up and he would watch the sunrise. He said the African sunrise has a very peculiar quality to it. And this one morning he was up and he noticed that an uncanny sense of stillness. And looked over and the baboon apes that usually are all feeding themselves or resting were all at attention, waiting. And Jung said he suddenly found himself really attentive. And then he saw several old natives who were there attentive. and then the Sun came up. And as it came up he said this kind of blinding quality of life as it began to ascend into the sky then also began to penetrate into the landscape. Penetrate into things. That they started to become not only illumined but transparent. He used the term crystalline. That the natural forms went not from darkness to light but into super light. Into a crystalline quality. And he said then he understood the archetype of Horus. It isn't just that it dawns but that the dawn penetrates the earth and purifies it. That's different. that's a zero-based ecology of infinite energy. And that's different.
And so when you went to build as his house the, the the dream vision the mandala center that came out was of his African hunt in Switzerland. Around his hearth. His bit of Sun. His bit of light that would penetrate his life, you see. The hearth as an archetype penetrates us by providing warmth and nourishment. The food is cooked there you see. We warm ourselves. it's a, it's a penetrating quality. That the archetype is objective not as that thing but as this process which goes through us and returns back. so that we're included you see.
And out of that he, in Memories, Dreams and Reflections recounts that he built Bollingen in three great movements separated by four years. so that over a period of twelve years he had built the house which was then complete until his wife's death. He incidentally began building Bollingen two months after his mother died. He built the tower. Then four years later he built an extension out from it. And then four years after that he bought the second tower. And then four years after that he built the courtyard. Because he realized that the courtyard, the space of the courtyard, was a part of the structure of the wholeness of the house. And only after his wife died that he realized that there was a fifth element. There's a quintessential element that was missing from the house. And that was to build the second story over the part that linked the two towers. And with the passing of his wife that he was left alone in this primordial sense. And now as the archetype of old man alone had to come out and raise himself above what he calls in Memories, Dreams and Reflections a maternal protectiveness which had always been there with his wife. And now in order to respond to that in the right way he had to raise himself up and become seen. And so that's when he built this, the completing part the fifth part of Bollingen in 1956. He was over 80 years old at that time.
So you can see that the house itself became a symbol for him. and very often...Jung never had a car until the 1930's, 29 or 30. He would ride a bicycle the 20 miles down. Or sail a boat. Or come by train and walk in from the Bollingen station. And it was always a place where he had that primordial contact with his vision which he had had in Africa in 1925. That understanding. He'd been prepared for. He had traveled for instance to North America. He had gone to see the Pueblo Indians. And had talked to an old Pueblo man who told them that we keep our sacrifices up in order to keep the Sun rising in its cycle. That if man, if some men, do not understand that they must accept responsibility for this. They must participate in this ecology. that after a while the Sun would lose its schedule and finally would not rise at all. But the universe continues because man willingly participates. And that they do it not only for Pueblo's but for all men. And Jung says this was one of the great lessons that he learned. It's like a lesson in the classical sense of drawing a moral. That what saved him in his struggle with the unconscious was realizing that he's not only doing this for himself but he's doing this for others also. That that element of selfless activity is often what is the saving grace. Because in the convolution, in the transformations, there comes that crunch. And it has to come as could see from the little prologue on Daoism. That in order for that universal energy to circulate freely it has to go through us. And if you make yourself a target in any way and stand in front of it, then you'll be smashed. but it can go through you. Either in your infinite capacity or in your capacity to not be there in any particular way.
He would also write. this is from Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Confrontation with The Unconscious, "An incessant stream of fantasies had been released. I did my best not to lose my head but to find some way to understand these strange things. I stood helpless before an alien world. Everything in it seemed difficult and incomprehensible. I was living in a constant state of tension. Often I felt as if gigantic blocks of stone were tumbling down upon me." That is to say this, this is the archetypal que. His horror. His oblivion came to him in this form, blocks of stone tumbling down upon him. So the building of the Bollingen tower out of stone. The building of his house out of the blocks of stone. And then setting in the garden a single block of stone which he then carved. And we'll see slides of that later on. With alchemical images. Philemon was there and various sages and so forth. And in one face of the stone you can still see the lightning that's there in stone.
We take a cue from the center of the illness. For its initial step for cure. We take the quintessence of the darkness for the seed of light. We take the very presence of nothingness is an indication of the beginnings of fullness. And it's only in that kind of massive universal jiu-jitsu that a balanceless balance is kept. And this is indeed very difficult to understand and why alchemy developed. As we'll see increasingly, alchemy East and West was the Royal art. It was the grand way of keeping track of your process in the tracklessness. Because it's essential quality was not that you produced this, that or the other but that transformation happened.
Towards the end of The Seminar on Dream Analysis Jung put this diagram on a board. If you have the book it's 596. And I've got to read a little bit of what Jung said at this time. This is the 14th of May 1930. Near the end of the series. "For it is all balanced. All regulated. Of course everyone believes that his problem is the worst. But in reality it is not the impossible that is expected of the human being. But that his power is broken is what a man of his caliber minds the most. You see the right arm is always the symbol of power. Those of you who have read my Psychology of the Unconscious will have found their the motif of the twisting of the arm out of action. Or the hip. Like in the legend of Jacob in the Old Testament." In Genesis. Where he was wrestling with the angel of the Lord all night. and of course the angel sensing that it was a standoff with Jacob and his full power twists his hip. Because man in his fullness is indeed formidable. "This is the destruction then," This is symbolic. "The destruction of man's selfish power. And this is inevitable." And in a way, in a very peculiar way this is a self-inflicted disability.
The differentiated function. This is Jung speaking, the differentiated function is always nearly always misused for one's own selfish power. Your best function is what is misused most. So that the crippling takes place exactly there. At that function. Whatever you do best. Whatever is your ace in the hole. That's taken away. And that that forces then, forces a compensation or at least a tendency to compensate exactly at the weakest. But in order to give to the weakest the least differentiated involves a long process. Which is geometrized right here on the board. In this case, let me read this for you. "The differentiated function is nearly always misused for one's own selfish power. It is an invaluable means to have as a weapon in the beginning. But usually one uses it for too selfish of ends and then comes the compensation of the unconscious. But then something will come up which takes the weapon out of your hands. Therefore in the hero myth, in the supreme struggle, the hero has to fight with his bare hands. Even his usual weapon fails him. The hero who has overcome the monster with cunning from within finds his arm twisted. He is deprived of his superior function for the sake of the next function which is waiting for differentiation."
That is to say instead of moving directly then to the least developed part, one slides over to the second-best function. You can't use your right hand, you use your left hand. But in using your left hand then there's a sense of imbalance and one seeks then to have a new secondary function. And so a third function is developed. Then with acquaintanceship with three functions the undifferentiated fourth function, the invisible, the nemesis, is able to be faced with this basic stable triad. But that the fourth does not become amenable to you in terms of just another power. It's the power which is there which you can't use in the same way as you use the other ones. You have to make allowances for that. It's like the courtyard. You can make allowances for its use but you can't build there. You only consciously know that you have to take this into account. So that the fullness in the self is not that all the functions become conscious. But that one becomes sensible to the fact that this is an impossible task. And one that you're not going to achieve. But that you can achieve wholeness by taking into consideration the unknowns, the intervals, the, the articulate spaces that you have to leave. And so your movement becomes a whole in this way. Jung writes, "As nature has pushed one function out into consciousness, so she seems to first man to become conscious of a second one. And for that purpose because the next one has to be developed the differentiated function suddenly becomes useless."
They could be useful if I make a diagram again. It helps to a clearer understanding. We always represent the four functions in the form of a cross. And in the volume there was presented a in 1929, which runs from pages 340 to 370 or so. Lecture 5 was a whole paper on the symbolism of the cross written by William Barrett. Who was an analyst and wrote a number of the interesting books. In the symbolism of the cross Barrett touches upon one aspect of the mystical cross. But doesn't develop it fully. And is this symbol which is the cyro(sp?). And I just mentioned it here so you can see how a how a symbol of wholeness operates. This kind of cross, or this kind of a cross or any kind a cross that you wish to put on of is a symbol but has a tendency to have a referential content. But the cyro is a mystical cross. Which has always a relational focus rather than a referential content. Because the cyro is actually the first two letters for the Greek word for cross. And instead of abbreviating it with the first two letters as usually would be done. This is called a nomina sacra, sacred name.
And in early first century Christian codex' there were four words that were always taken out of the text. Jesus, Christ, Lord, Anthropos. Those four Greek words were not allowed to be written with the rest of the writing. But were always raised in superscript above the line. So that in the line there was a space where the word would be. So that in the normal world where language is descriptive there's a space. There's a gap. And in the super sensual world instead of having the word written one would have the abbreviation. But the classic abbreviation was to take the first and the last letters of the word. That was the Greek way. But in the mystical sense one took the first two letters. But instead of writing them out in a linear sequence and following with the mystical nature one put the one on top of the other. So that the name has no sense in linking. The word Christos(sp?) comes out from the center. And there is no linearity on the page at all. Not in the line of script. That in the super script. not in the abbreviation. Not anywhere.
So the cyro is a mystical symbol in this sense of the self. And it's, it's related here kurios, lord. Means someone who has the power. And in this in a mystical way the christ is someone who has this power symbol of the self. But notice that the self symbol in no away is really referential. It doesn't represent anything. It presents itself. And this is the most difficult thing to realize. And especially commentators on Jung are always sliding off and it's, it's unfortunate. The self presents itself. It doesn't symbolize anything else. It doesn't represent anything else. It doesn't stand in place of anything else. But presents itself.
The persona in a very real way is the mask of the self. So that primordial man when he wished to be present in the spirit he would put a mask on. So if this face doesn't show what this mask shows. It shows in a very real way that even though he is not here that energy which is really here presents itself in this mask. So that the mask became godlike not the man.
And Jung in The Dream Seminar again and again goes over the fact that in the first flush of success when you get to understand that you have a tremendous power in analysis. That you can understand that you could open these puzzles up. You can quote make progress. You can command more and more. That an inflation, a feeling of God likeness comes out of this. And the wise person watches this with eagle eye. Because that inflation is certainly just as dangerous as any kind of a despair that one would have had before. And so for this one has to learn to deal with success and not just with despair.
But in this example here, this diagram, with four functions in the form of the cross. And as I put thinking in the East, feeling here in the West. Because feeling is opposite to thinking. This is the Heraquitian(?) opposites. One has to ommit the standpoint of thinking very carefully in order to realize one's feeling and vice versa. That is when thinking is operating as a function feeling tends not to operate. When feeling is operating as a function thinking tends not to operate. It's a rare art that is able to bring thinking and feeling together. And of course this has been this has been the goal of many artists for the last hundred years. To find an art form which brings thinking and feeling into play all at the same time. This for instance was the whole purpose of Vogner's operas. To bring music and dramatic action together. He wanted to bring Aeschylus and Beethoven together in one art form. And twentieth-century art has struggled very much with, with trying to find a multifunctional art form. And of course we have one that has to come up in our time the cinema. Which very adequately can present thinking and feeling at the same time. A very powerful art form.
But here in this quaternary. And notice that the mystical aspect of this quaternary is the center. Even though the four functions are out in a cross, the center of it in no way is differentiated. It's a very peculiar quality. So thinking and feeling and intuition at the top and sensation at the bottom.
Now let us assume that the differentiated function would be intuition. And the auxiliary function, thinking. Because this is very characteristic of 20th century human beings. That their intuition is the lead function and thinking is their secondary function. Then the division would be put here around A. This is the primary function. This is the secondary function. Instead of being exactly at center, it balances about 2/3 over towards intuition. Which means then that the baseline for this type, this personality type, the, the unconscious baseline is being changed. If one had a different leading function and an auxilary function, the baseline would be different accordingly. You can see then that this dotted coordinate can go all around the entire circle.
It's important to the idea here is that there's an ambidextrousness to psychic energy. That there's no way that any kind of a diagram pertains. Unless you bring that diagram out of yourself. Because you don't know where you are on this. And there's no other person who can displace you in this regard. So that all investigation has to be personal.
So that the line of division B and C, between the conscious and unconscious in a pure intuitive type would be as I have, as I have indicated.
Now if he gets into a situation in which his intuition doesn't help him. Say for instance when he should think about things, then his intuition is of no use. It is the worst nonsense. When a necessity comes of his understanding what the situation is instead of always running ahead, chasing new possibilities. He has to suppress intuition to a certain extent. For intuition will go on over crowding his conscious with new contents. And whenever he begins something new he has to run after it. And we see a lot of people today who are just compulsively dominated by the runway intuition function. And their arms are full of ideas and there's yet another one over here. So this function in this case becomes impaired. And the usual secondary function here thinking then is relied upon.
Very often he writes these intuitive types get a physical illness because sensation is the opposite of intuition. You get a physical illness. Tuberculosis, ulcers of the stomach, other abdominal troubles chiefly. Also particular and peculiar hysterical troubles. Phobias and so forth. Which may produce all sorts of symptoms that immobilize such people. The whole purpose of these symptoms is to lay them low. To force them to exclude possibilities. To limit them. They can't have a new hope every minute. You've got this to work with. And you have to think about it. Then they have to keep still and cannot run after things. They're put into situations where they can keep thinking. Where the only thing that they can do is then to think furiously. And that's a familiar refrain. And this is how a function is paralyzed or killed for the sake of another function.
In this case the individual moves on here to D. They tend to move on to, to D. They tend to move up closer to the relation of sensation. And
here he approaches the sphere of unconsciousness. Here he is going beneath the line of B/C in this particular diagram. And as he does that
there is a perilousness that occurs to him. And because he's not using his intuition so accurately he thinks about it. And he's weighing all these thoughts. What is happening? What's gonna happen? What's going to come out of this? What do I have to watch out for? And it increases this sense of uneasiness in perilousness. So that this inferior function with..which is opposite to the superior one this is his very devil. That neighborhood becomes full of uncanniness. One shuns it as much as possible. One is afraid of all that might be behind this threshold of unconsciousness. Therefore we make a different move. We don't go there. We don't we don't face that. We go to a lesser danger. In this case on his diagram to be in here. Instead of going this way, you slide around this way. We go not to the really dangerous aspect for ourselves but would take the lesser of two evils.
And in this way we start to develop the third aspect. And when we have the three, three functions on our side. When some element of the unconscious has been allied to us. Then we're able finally to direct ourselves to that fourth, missing fourth. Now you can see that the structure of this is archetypal. It's not just a function of the Western mind or Western civilization. It's a function of human nature, world round for all the time. But that fourth function, that fourth element, is a completing element and does not participate in the same way that the others participate. It's a completion. It's a fulfillment. And one has to see this in a different way. All of this. And we're running out of time here. All of this becomes extremely precarious for the individual.
And so dream analysis develops itself as one of the royal roads to bridging from the unconscious in its imagery into consciousness. And it's a strategic, increasingly enlarging strategic understanding of itself and what it's up against. But at the point where our fullness is a possibility the stakes go up. And instead of just dreaming dreams, one comes into material which is even deeper and far more formidable.
And so next week we'll take up the vision seminars. For the man then has to develop the capacity to envision. Not just to analyze dreams but to be able to comprehend major visions which come out of himself. He have to mature almost into a level of universal civilization within himself to be able to carry out the task. Otherwise he will simply be outclassed and outdistanced by the event. He has to learn that he has a universal quality. That his very humanity, his or her humanity, is a universal quality and not at all isolated from other human beings. Not at all unusual in the history of the world. And in fact everywhere one looks one finds allies. All men and women in this regard are one's allies. And humanity counts for a whole. And we'll see that next week.
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