Seeing Through the Visible World: Jung, Gnosis, and Chaos

by June K. Singer

Most of us recognize that there is one world of everyday practical reality, and yet another world beyond the boundaries of common knowledge – a world that encompasses ideals, values, and most of all, the mysteries of the not-yet-known or the unknowable. June Singer, blending the insights of a lifetime with her experiences as a Jungian psychoanalyst, takes us on an extraordinary journey of discovery into the invisible world of mind and spirit that lies beyond the tangible. We tend to live in the first world and venture from time to time in the second, but they are often separated and alienated from one another. Seeing Through the Visible World offers us ways to integrate these worlds within ourselves, so that both can exist at the same time, so that one world enriches the other. “There is no single way to come into touch with the invisible world,” writes Singer, “nor is there a practice that suits everyone. Among the many paths that seekers have discovered over the centuries, each person can find a way to the inner kingdom and a key that will open the ‘doors of perception.’ There is no particular way to begin; the beginning will come where an opening is found.” Here Singer follows two very different women as they learn to recognize the clues by which the invisible world reveals itself to human understanding – through dreams and fantasies, through visionary experiences, through human interactions, and through the depths of solitude. She reveals how the invisible world is viewed objectively through the physical and biological sciences, through traditional and Gnostic spiritual disciplines, and through the psychology of the unconscious. She then suggests how to integrate the visible and invisible in our lives to recover a sense of wholeness and find creative answers to personal and global problems.

Genres: Psychology, Spirituality

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Cristina Smith]

June Singer was one of the leading Jungian psychologists who brought forth many then revolutionary concepts that are now life. Her book Androgyny in 1977 set the stage for today's gender fluidity. Published in 1990, this book explores a rich blend of gnosis, psychology, subtle energy and mysticism. It was truly revolutionary to alchemize these at that time and she does so quite well.

A bit on the dry side to read, this book is recommended resource for those doing in depth explorations in the psychological, subtle energy realms.

[Jerry Peace]

Best line- "This practice [the practice of dying] can help you learn to do a little less, do it a bit more slowly, do it with care, and do it with love."

[Thomas Goddard]

💬 "On Peckham Rye it is, as he will in after years relate, that while quite a child, of eight or ten perhaps, he has his 'first vision. Saun- tering along, the boy looks up and sees a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars. Returned home he relates the incident, and only through his mother's intercession escapes a thrashing from his honest father, for telling a lie" 💬

William Blake's childhood experience made me seek a vision. I turned to look out the window of the train carriage, looked at the moody northern sky and said, quietly, 'Let me see a vision of your splendour'... I welled up. I admitted defeat and allowed my gaze to slip to the horizon and below to the countryside rolling by. That moment became the vision I had requested. Recognition landed in me. Everything is his splendour.

I love and hate the god-shaped hole inside myself. Placed there at a formative stage, unshakable. It provides me with near-constant death anxiety and yet is also a fountain of such splendid, transcendent moments of pure joy. Too infrequently, but occasionally.

This was another good dip into the self and the elements within that make up our picture of the world. The influence that influences. The power of action.

Captivating and really grounded in the development of Jung's ideas in a practical way.