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December 26, 2021 - January 15, 2022
“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything that I cannot explain as a fraud.” Unfortunately, from my perspective, many of those who call themselves Jungians do not share Jung’s courageous attitude.
By the term ‘metaphysics,’ for instance, I don’t mean supernatural entities or paranormal phenomena, but the essence of being of things, creatures and phenomena. As such, a metaphysics of nature entails a certain view about what nature is in and of itself, as opposed to how it behaves (which is the subject of science) or how it appears to observation (which is a subject of cognitive psychology and phenomenology).
whereas the word ‘mind’ is often used—even by Jung himself— in the restrictive sense of intellect or rational thought, ‘psyche’ has a broader denotation, encompassing not only thought but also intuition, imagination, feeling, emotion, etc.
spirit (the drive to serve something bigger than oneself) is the opposite of instinct (the drive to act towards of one’s own survival).
In summary, according to Jung consciousness is a subset of what we today call ‘phenomenal consciousness.’ In addition to being experiential in nature, conscious contents must: (a) fall under the control of deliberate personal volition; (b) be meta-cognitively re-represented or reflected, so as to be introspectively accessible and reportable; and (c) be linked within a firmly-knit web of cognitive associations.
The essence of both consciousness and the unconscious is thus experiential, experience being the unifying factor that brings them together as integral parts of the psyche.
The psyche is defined by phenomenality : all its contents have an experiential essence or nature. Some of these contents are conscious in that they are controlled by deliberate volition, accessible through self-reflective introspection and linked in a web of cognitive associations. The remaining contents are unconscious. These unconscious contents are objective in the sense of being autonomous from the point of view of consciousness. The activity of consciousness and the unconscious can impinge on each other. When the unconscious impinges on consciousness, we experience the resulting effects
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in Jung’s view the psyche may be an ecosystem of communicating conscious agencies, in which ego-consciousness is merely one of the participants.
Unlike Freud, Jung sees the unconscious as an active and creative agency in its own right, not merely a passive repository of repressed or discarded contents of ego-consciousness. As a matter of fact, Jung maintains that consciousness evolved from the unconscious, the latter being older
So for Jung consciousness rests on the unconscious, not the other way around. The latter is the original psyche, the root from which consciousness grew over time as the properties of volitional control, self-reflective introspective access and cognitive association slowly arose in some originally unconscious contents.
The picture we are left with is that of a psyche divided into three layers: the bottom, primordial layer is the collective unconscious, which consists of psychoid contents that can never reach ego-consciousness (although they can still impinge on ego-consciousness and thereby cause introspectively accessible effects, such as dreams and visions). The middle layer, sandwiched between the other two, is the personal unconscious. The top layer, which we ordinarily identify with, is ego-consciousness. Psychic contents can move between the personal unconscious and ego-consciousness.
The structure of the collective unconscious is defined by what Jung calls the ‘archetypes.’ These are primordial, a priori templates of psychic activity.
The basic idea here is that, insofar as we fail to deliberately assume volitional control of our inner life and behaviors, they tend to unfold along archetypal lines. These lines are innate dispositions of the psyche, which operate and exert their influence from outside ego-consciousness.
As our common inheritance, they largely define our humanity.
As such, what we call ‘instincts’ can be looked upon as a mode of expression of the archetypes. By the same token, what Jung calls ‘spirit’—discussed earlier—is also intimately related to the archetypes:
In Jung’s own words, instinct (“the biological pattern of behavior”) and spirit (“the mythological archetype”) are “modos agendi,” ways of acting of the archetypes (JWL: 70). It is the tension between the ‘low,’ egotistic energy of instinct on the one hand and the ‘high,’ impersonal energy of spirit on the other that fuels psychic life and creates its dynamisms (cf. ONP: 138-139).
As such, insofar as we can know them, the archetypes are defined but abstract, have form but no content, just as the crystal’s lattice structure before the crystal actually forms. They are tendencies, dispositions, even probabilities —as Jung posits when attempting to link the archetypes to the nondeterministic behavior of nature at a quantum scale (cf. AA: 70)—not experiences in and of themselves. Indeed, one could liken the archetypes to the intrinsic natural modes of excitation of a structure: they are the patterns according to which the psyche as a whole—as determined mostly by the
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the archetypal manifestations in our lives—in both dream and waking states—form a symbolic narrative meant to show to ego-consciousness what is going on in the unconscious. They illustrate, in symbolic form, the longings, fears and insights of the unconscious, which remain dissociated from ego-consciousness or beyond the reach of self-reflective introspection. Importantly, they also illustrate how the unconscious regards what is going on in ego-consciousness, thereby conveying the unconscious’s own perspective on life. Archetypal images thus represent an effort by the unconscious to reach out
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Therefore, according to Jung, attention must be paid to the meaning of archetypal manifestations, if we are to succeed in the process of individuation and achieve the ultimate psychic objective. The unconscious provides the clues, but ego-consciousness must deliberately reflect on their symbolic connotations and grasp the message.
We don’t see causality; we only see its manifest consequences in nature’s behavior. Therefore, the underlying organizing principle is meta physical, instead of physical. It is derived on the basis of induction —the theoretical inference of a general law from repeated instances of conjoint events—which goes beyond empirical observation.
For all we know, instead of accidents, quantum events conform to subtle, non-local patterns of organization corresponding to a yet-unacknowledged metaphysical ordering principle, different from causality.
According to him, next to causality, the physical world organizes itself along archetypal correspondences ofmeaning, which break down the barrier between world and psyche
synchronicity entails an equivalence of symbolic meaning between our inner psychic state and the concurrent physical state of the world surrounding us, as if they mirrored each other. This is metaphysically significant, for it abolishes the separation between world and psyche.
Jung’s writings on synchronicity are peppered with subtle suggestions that this unifying metaphysical ground underlying both psyche and physics is experiential.
the archetypes are a priori, fundamental templates of psychic activity that constitute or reflect the structure of the collective unconscious. By claiming that synchronicities unfold according to archetypal patterns, Jung is implying that the collective unconscious underlies both consciousness and the physical world itself. This is a remarkable claim, as it means that physical events are orchestrated by the same a priori patterns that orchestrate events in consciousness.
For Jung, the collective unconscious underlies and permeates the whole of space in a non-local fashion. This means that the expression of the archetypes in the physical world is global, instead of being restricted by the locality constraints of causality, such as the speed of light limit. In other words, archetypal patterns organize the world instantaneously across space, operating within the degrees of freedom left open by the indeterminacy of quantum-level events.
The archetype is not a causal agency, but the natural template according to which both the human psyche and—if Jung is correct—the physical world spontaneously organize themselves. This is analogous to how the crystal spontaneously grows according to a particular, identifiable lattice structure, without the lattice itself constituting a causal agency.
In other words, causality is to synchronicity as Newtonian mechanics is to quantum physics. Causal regularities are just discernible local contours of much more subtle, global patterns of similarity in nature. For Jung, ultimately everything in nature unfolds according to similarity-based associations.
metaphysical judgment always entails conceptual abstractions pointing beyond direct, personal empirical experience. For instance, we cannot ascertain that matter outside and independent of experience exists, for all we have are perceptual experiences.
Jung invites us to think of the psyche as something analogous to the spectrum of light, which runs from the infra-red to the ultra-violet. In the middle of the spectrum, corresponding to visible light, we have the psyche proper. On the higher, ultra-violet end we have the spiritual psychoid. On the lower, infrared end we have the instinctual psychoid
Jung’s theories thus imply a form of metaphysical idealism: 12 all existence unfolds in a “greater and more comprehensive consciousness,” in the form of a play of experiences.
It is the collective unconscious alone that Jung means to equate with matter, not the psyche as a whole. Both the collective unconscious and matter, as they are in themselves, cannot be apprehended directly but just inferred from their effects on ego-consciousness.
The wholeness of man [which includes ego-consciousness] holds the middle position, namely between the mundus archetypus, which is real, because it acts, and the physis, which is just as real, because it acts. The principle of both, however, is unknown and therefore not ascertainable. Moreover, there are grounds for supposing that both are different aspects of one and the same principle
So far as we can see, the collective unconscious is identical with Nature to the extent that Nature herself, including matter, is unknown to us. I have nothing against the assumption that the psyche is a quality of matter or matter the concrete aspect of the psyche, provided that “psyche” is defined as the collective unconscious.
Therefore, I submit that the correct interpretation of Jung’s seemingly dual-aspect monist hypothesis above is the following: both the objective psyche (more specifically, the collective unconscious) and the objective world (i.e. matter) are conceptualinferences of ego-consciousness, neither being amenable to direct inspection. All we can know about them is their effects on ego-consciousness, caused by their impinging on it, either through the sense organs (in the case of the objective world) or through a shared, internal psychic boundary (in the case of the objective psyche). Therefore, it is
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Be that as it may, the impossibility of conceptually defining the psychic—as desirable in the natural sciences—does not mean that we can’t become acquainted with it and therefore know it in this latter sense. Babies become acquainted with their entire experiential environment before conceptual thinking even begins to develop in them. Indeed, it is impossible to not become acquainted with the psychic, for it is all we ever have; it is the water wherein we are always swimming. For Jung, we cannot ‘know’ the psychic merely in the sense that we say fish cannot know water.
an interpretation of Jung’s metaphysics-related contentions that reconciles them all: the metaphysical essence of everything — spirit, psyche and the physical universe at large—is the same essence we become directly acquainted with through human experience—i.e. a phenomenal essence.
The notion that the substrate of all reality—both inner and outer worlds—is essentially experiential has obvious religious overtones, in that such substrate could also be described as an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, supraordinate universal mind, of which we are all dissociated centers of awareness.
His brilliance is in framing his message so that it mirrors the foolish expectations of the mainstream—and therefore masquerades as mainstream— while conveying its intended meaning fully, openly, without any concession or compromise, to those with the eyes to see it. Jung hides his religious views in plain sight.
Yes, for Jung religion is indeed about the psychic; but so is everything else. For him even the external world beyond the personal psyche—which we perceive via the five senses—is in itself essentially psychic and organized by archetypes. We are, and are immersed in, the psychic. A physical world outside and independent of the psychic sphere is only a theoretical abstraction, known only conceptually and ultimately unreal.
Only through us does the divinity attain consciousness. “As the eye to the sun, so the [human] soul corresponds to God,” explains Jung in wonderfully aphoristic words (PA: 10); “an eye destined to behold the light”
Jung speaks of “existence becoming real through reflection in consciousness,” for “Without the reflecting consciousness of man the world is a gigantic meaningless machine”
the collective unconscious as a transpersonal experiential field, which generates all autonomous imagery we experience as both the perceived physical world and the worlds of dreams and visions;
the collective unconscious—whose innate templates of behavior, or archetypes, organize both the individual psyche and the physical world—explains the nature of the physical world: both our material bodies and the inanimate universe as a whole are the outer appearance of experiential inner life.
According to Jung’s metaphysics, the physical world outside, just like intense nightly dreams, is also a psychic expression organized according to archetypal patterns. We inhabit an experiential universe embodying archetypal semantics. As such, waking life is in many ways akin to a dream and thus symbolic, non-literal, amenable to interpretation. Like our nightly dreams, the physical world isn’t just what it seems to be; instead, it is also an expression of underlying mental dynamisms, therefore carrying a message. Life in the world can be interpreted just as our nightly dreams can. Upon lying
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Instinctual animals face no dilemmas or difficult choices; instead, instinct always provides them with one, clear path forward. They don’t second-guess themselves, regret past choices or feel anxiety about future predicaments. By operating purely instinctually they are one with nature and feel no inner tension. Only we, conscious human beings, do all those things, for “we have turned away from the certain guidance of instinct and are handed over to fear”
Consciousness is what makes us suffer. The development of consciousness is the sacrifice of the merely natural man—of the unconscious, ingenuous being … The biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse.
Jung is saying that attaining consciousness—the Fall of Man—is a curse, which he later characterizes as our sacrifice to God, to help God develop self-reflection. The unspoken implication is that, insofar as the devil tricked Adam and Eve into taking a bite from the forbidden fruit, it was the devil who sacrificed humans, so as to render a service to his father. And since hatching such a plan must have required foresight—a capability unique to consciousness—presumably the devil had already sacrificed himself.
Satan who, with good reason, later on received the name of “Lucifer” [i.e. bringer of light 17], knew how to make more frequent and better use of omniscience than did his father. (AJ: 51) Satan, the chief tormentor, as the original tormented; demons as the tough-love instigators of self-awareness
Taking a cue from the name of the tree that produced the forbidden fruit—the ‘tree of knowledge’—he links consciousness to contextual knowledge, i.e. webs of cognitively associated contents, apparently overlooking self-reflection: There are no problems without consciousness.
