An Order Outside Time: A Jungian View of the Higher Self from Egypt to Christ
492
An Order Outside Time: A Jungian View of the Higher Self from Egypt to Christ
492eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612832364 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 06/23/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 492 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Robert B. Clarke (1941-2009) was led through the individuation process by 30,000 dreams and the works of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Delving deeply into the realms of philosophy, religion, and psychology as an independent scholar and mystic, he described unsuspected connections between the world of the unconscious and the world of our history, tradition, and scriptures. These insights were explained in five books, three of which are being published posthumously.
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AN ORDER OUTSIDE TIME
A JUNGIAN VIEW OF THE HIGHER SELF FROM EGYPT TO CHRIST
By Robert B. Clarke
Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Robert B. ClarkeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61283-236-4
CHAPTER 1
Ancient Egyptian Religion and the Unconscious
That which is called Christian Religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist, from the beginning of the race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which already existed began to be called Christianity.
—Saint Augustine
Dream Visions Light the Way
Jung once had a dream of rows of corpses that descended through the centuries to a medieval layer. At the end of this row, he came upon the corpse of a Crusader whose forefinger moved, thus presaging Jung's discovery of the unconscious archetypes, which had become largely activated in medieval alchemy. I too had a strange dream that also concerned layers of corpses, only this involved digging them up in an ancient temple, which quickly became a graveyard of very early Egypt. I had first come to a layer involving the Pharaohs, to a stele depicting the gods in gold leaf and, as archaeologists stood around watching, they were speechless at my discoveries. As I dug even deeper, I came to corpses of the very earliest period, and this left the scholars awestruck. (I am merely stating the dream here.)
Just as Jung then studied medieval alchemy after his dream, coming to some startling conclusions, I too have come to realize certain things concerning the unconscious processes at work in both the early Egyptians and the Jews, of which modern Egyptologists and biblical scholars seem little aware. This is due in the main to their lack of knowledge of the collective unconscious and its archetypal processes.
It is also some years since I had another dream, in which Jung demonstrated to me how a royal line of blue blood—divine incarnations of the Higher Self—reaches back to the beginnings of ancient Egyptian culture, through the Hebrew prophets, and up to Christ. In fact, in my dream, Jung was to me "the personification of spirit," to use one of his terms. The coming forth of these immortal figures is due to certain initiates undergoing Jung's individuation process, and indeed, we can see how this is so from both the Egyptian sources and the biblical texts, once we grasp that both are actual records of archetypal processes in and through the unconscious.
It is of paramount importance for us to realize that these processes not only occurred, and occur, from the historical past to the present day, on the same developing line, but that they involve direct experiences of God, forming the essence of a prolonged covenant with Him through the unconscious. Modern Man has broken that covenant, and it is imperative that it be restored. Man's very survival depends upon new understanding of his religious heritage, for only then can the covenant with the spirit be renewed with the knowledge that it is authentic.
Here is my second dream concerning the royal line of true blue blood and its interpretation. This will show that the concept was not primarily my own idea, but rather the facts as presented to me by unconscious/spirit reality.
I have a vision of a stream of blue blood that starts at the unrecorded beginnings of ancient Egypt in a sort of lake. This runs through the Egypt of the Pharaohs, through the Israel of the prophets, and up to Christ. It becomes stuck there, however, and does not develop further as it is meant to do.
A giant-size Jung is overhead, but just from the waist up, and his mighty arms are outstretched to span the stream of blue blood, which is a royal line from Egypt to the present. Jung says, "The royal line unites," but it must, I gather, be brought up to the present. Where the stream becomes stuck two thousand years ago, I see Christ crucified. It is not on a hill, as always depicted, but in a small public square surrounded by buildings.
The stream of blue blood is the royal line of spiritual kings, not kings of this world, but successive developments of the Higher Self as Son of God through the collective unconscious. Egyptian kingship was based on the phenomenon of the Higher Self, or rather on the divine Father and Son archetype ("Out of the Father comes the Son," as an earlier dream of mine had said; see The Four Gold Keys), as were many gods and culture-heroes around the world. Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David, Solomon, Enoch, Ezekiel, and Daniel, the latter three with their Son of Man figures, were of the line, and Jesus with the Son of Man, or the Christ, was possibly the highest development of it ever.
The Pharaohs were worldly kings, of course, but each of them was said to be Horus in human form, with the High God, Ra, as Father. This is what Jung meant when he said that Jesus as a man equals ego-consciousness, while Christ as a god equals the Higher Self. Iu-em-hetep was, in the cult at Memphis, divine Son of Ptah, and, in another form, son of Atum at Annu (also son of Atum-Ra). Iu-emhetep has since been demoted to the merely human Imhotep, whom we can now take as the human initiate, corresponding to the man Jesus. Imhotep, builder of the first step pyramid in Egypt, was vizier and High Priest to Pharaoh Djoser (c 2668-2649 B.C.). Imhotep was always considered a god by scholars until a partial statue of Djoser was unearthed (only the feet remained), bearing the titles of Imhotep on the base.
So Pharaoh/Horus/Ra, Imhotep/Iu-em-hetep/Ptah, Daniel/Son of Man/ Ancient of Days, and Jesus/Christ/God are all based on the same developing model. Melchizedek, the mysterious priest-king from whom Abraham receives bread and wine, who has "neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God" Ps. 110:4; Heb. 5:6), is certainly the Higher Self of Abraham. Samson with his great strength, which is actually the power of the Higher Self, is another version, while the story of Moses is full of symbolism of processes that can only involve the Higher Self and God.
The roots of Christianity, as well as lying far back in the ancient past, also and primarily lie rooted deep in the collective unconscious and ultimately involve God but must undergo further development. This, if it occurs, will be a great leap forward and will bring the royal line up to date. The effects of this will continue the relationship, the covenant, of Man with God, which began so many thousands of years ago. This must involve the Higher Self in all its aspects, including the divine Father/Son incarnation, as well as the recognition of the lower depths of the unconscious, the Lower Self, the World Soul, whether as the Virgin Mary as goddess or otherwise. (Mary as goddess will be explained later.)
The further development must also involve the dark underside of the unconscious, which alchemy revealed to us. Spirit/soul reality through the unconscious reveals itself to be not solely of the light; the instinctual, chthonic dragon depths also simmer there. There is a chthonic trinity that counter-matches the higher trinity of spirit, which the poet Dante experienced, and which I have experienced several times myself. The higher spirit itself has its dark side, however, and may be destructive.
But the development must also include such things as reincarnation and Jungian depth psychology. In fact, it is with the knowledge and understanding of depth psychology that we can now understand all that has gone before. We must also include the valuable experiences not only of the alchemists, but also of all the other esoteric Mysteries based on the unconscious processes, while keeping to the central royal line that is our heritage.
Other royal lines are just as valid. Buddhism developed out of Hinduism, for instance, but neither speak the language of the Western collective unconscious, just as ours does not speak theirs, even if the symbolism is similar, expressing the same basic archetypal truths. No matter what our conscious attitudes and beliefs may be, Vishnu, Krishna, and the Buddha do not speak to the depths of the Western collective unconscious, for it thinks in terms of Christ and the lower spirit of Mercurius and their respective realms.
These are not just my own conscious ideas, or even Jung's, but the facts as presented to me by the unconscious during my years undergoing the individuation process. I was even instructed a couple of times in dreams to send all of this information to the pope as evidence of these things, and of what must be done, but I never did. Perhaps I should have, for the unconscious was quite adamant about it.
One further thing worth mentioning concerning the Higher Self as divine Son was pointed out by Gerald Massey. He said that the first divine Son in its first phase in Egypt was Son of the Mother, but in its second phase was Son of the Father. The Egyptians termed the High God Ra, the "male mother" in that aspect, because the second divine Son issues from the Father alone. It is true that Hathor is Mother of Horus when Ra is Father, but this is in other myths. This is wise and fits in with the Higher Self processes in the unconscious, who in the first phase is born of the feminine soul depths, but in the second phase is born of the higher spirit—Son of the Mother in lower form, but Son of the Father in higher form.
Both Horus and Christ are born of the Mother first, but are later claimed by the Father, who says in both cases, roughly speaking, "This is my beloved son." Looked at from the view of the whole process, however, the divine inspiration from above comes first. In my own case, it involved visitations from Christ in dreams, instructing me to spiritualize the lower depths, which must be won over to the higher spirit in the great task.
The Beginnings of the Royal Line
The roots of ancient Egyptian civilization stretch back into the distant past, and its high culture endured for over three thousand years before the birth of Christ. There was probably a period of development prior to this elsewhere to account for the great blossoming of culture that otherwise seems quite sudden, for it is a fact that by the time of the first dynasties, the carved hieroglyphs were of such a fine quality they were never equaled in any other period afterward. The myths also reveal an already highly developed association with the spirit, evidence that the royal line of direct experience of the spirit was already well under way.
Everything was recorded on stone or papyrus; the Egyptians had such great reverence for the sacred texts that, even when ideas did change, they would add the new writings to the old ones so that the latter were never erased. Since this continued to occur over a period of thousands of years, we can understand how it confused modern scholars and perhaps the later Egyptians themselves. Nevertheless, the earlier religious ideas and teachings from the Old Kingdom were higher and purer than at any time later. We today could live by Ptah, the High God, and the world would be a much better place; in fact, we would be living in an essentially Christian way.
Foreigners apparently took the early high culture to Egypt, though there is evidence of more than one source of influence. Many early Egyptologists were of the opinion that invaders sailed around the tip of southern Arabia, arriving at southern Egypt by way of the Red Sea, and, indeed, the latest evidence is that northern Egypt around the Delta was conquered by a more advanced culture from the south. There may also have been some influence from the westerly direction involving writing and building and even mummification. It is also said that DNA tests have revealed close connection between the peoples of North Africa and ancient Britain.
But whatever the situation, the figures depicted from the first dynasties of the ruling strata of the culture look Indo-European, and at least one or two of the painted statuettes have blue eyes, seeming to show that some influence may have been a type of Celt, as some have suggested. Egyptologist Walter A. Fairservis, in The Ancient Kingdoms of the Nile and the Doomed Monuments of Nubia, wrote that a dark, long-faced, Mediterranean type of people inhabited Egypt first, and invaders who brought the higher culture apparently then conquered them.
Victorian archaeologists of Massey's time believed solidly in "diffusion," the theory that civilization began in just one place and then spread around the globe. This idea was due to the fact that myths are almost identical in structure the world over, though at different levels of development, suggesting a common origin. But we now know that the common source is the collective unconscious, shared by all peoples, and that primitive Man spread across the world much earlier than the formation of the developed myths.
William Flinders Petrie, regarded as the father of modern Egyptology, unearthed much evidence to suggest that a primitive culture in Egypt had suddenly been taken over by a more advanced one. In fact, there were signs that the primitive people had practiced cannibalism, as Petrie uncovered the scattered bones of human skeletons with the marrow extracted, some of the bones having teeth marks that could only have been made by other humans. Petrie was thereby led to the conclusion that a "Dynastic Race" had traveled to Egypt by boat from Sumeria, sailing around southern Arabia—thus agreeing with a number of other scholars.
Little pieces of evidence, which I give later, seem to support this. Certainly, some of the mythic/religious concepts, such as of the Underworld, are the same in both Egyptian and Sumerian cultures, and a number of key words are very similar, although the Egyptian mythos is more highly developed than the Sumerian. But then, the Egyptian culture came later, and had had time to develop.
All of this may be interesting, of course, but you are entitled to ask, what has it to do with processes of the unconscious? The answer is that with these first cultures of the Middle East, humankind suddenly took a giant leap forward. It was to happen a little later in India and China, and even in the Americas, so the latest evidence suggests. But it had to happen first somewhere, and that was in the Middle East, around the Fertile Crescent, as it has been termed, and fertile in a deeper sense than solely the agricultural. For what was involved were the workings of the spirit; spirit caused the leap forward, and the evidence is there in all of the myths.
A suitable physical environment was necessary, as was a sufficient level of basic culture growth, but these were not the real causes of the tremendous leap forward. The truth is, Man had reached a level where he could be inspired; this originally meant "filled with and moved by spirit," that is, "inspirited." As the soul reached up through a type of evolution in matter, finally producing Man to a sufficiently fine degree, the creative spirit from above was able to descend to do its work, although this largely happened behind the world of matter, so to speak, through the collective unconscious.
I shall explain this further later, but as I said earlier, I have been experiencing the spirit forces of the unconscious for decades and on this basis I can see they are clearly discernible in all early myths, and, indeed, later ones. The original Bible texts speak of the Elohim, or angels, which Revelation later calls the creative "Seven Spirits of God" (Rev. 4:5), and we find their equivalents in myths worldwide, following the same archetypal pattern. I recently came across a sentence by H. P. Blavatsky, the nineteenth-century mystic and authority on the esoteric Mysteries, where she speaks of how the "first human races evolved with the help of the Dhyan Chohans" (Blavatsky 1888), the Hindu seven divine creative powers that equal the Elohim or archangels of the Bible, and this is precisely what I mean.
These are the same creative forces of spirit accessed through the unconscious, in that spirit/soul other reality, working on Man from behind, so to speak, and we shall see them later and often. These Seven Powers have been known to many peoples of the world, bringing about forward leaps in nature and culture, amazingly as the Bible and other ancient texts always insisted.
As the origins of the early peoples of Egypt are something of a mystery to scholars, so too are its gods. In The Phoenix Solution, Alan F. Alford states that no consensus of opinion has ever been reached as to the origins of the Egyptian gods, and he ponders if they were early kings deified, or, to keep the masses in line, the inventions of priests. Or are their origins something else entirely? Alford asks. Jung largely solved the mystery as early as 1912, expressed in his revolutionary Symbols of Transformation (Psychology of the Unconscious), though few people listened or understood, certainly not Egyptologists. But Jung demonstrated how all myths and genuine religions are rooted in the realm of the unconscious, though by no means are they limited to a narrow concept of unconscious reality. Jung still had much to learn at that time, and so some of his theories were a little undeveloped, though it is nevertheless an astounding work for the time.
Jung's scope of vision grew ever wider as the years passed, and he came to realize that myths are a gold mine of information concerning direct experience of unconscious processes, which are by no means limited to the personal level—rather, the opposite. It is a fact that the archetypal symbols are actually products of spirit/soul reality itself, which is why myths have a fairytale-like quality. These symbolic experiences were naturally developed and elaborated by conscious Man over long periods of time, becoming the stuff of myth and the dogma of religions, but the mythic foundations were always deeply rooted in the realm of the unconscious. Jung stressed that only by calling the eternal forces experienced through the unconscious "gods" do we do them justice and express their true nature and, although we find different forms of the gods all over the world, they nevertheless express the same archetypal forces and patterns.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from AN ORDER OUTSIDE TIME by Robert B. Clarke. Copyright © 2005 Robert B. Clarke. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc..
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,
One: Ancient Egyptian Religion and the Unconscious,
Two: Gods of the Individuation Process in Egypt,
Three: Unlocking the Gates of the Amenta Underworld,
Four: Ancient Myths and the Early Bible,
Five: From the Chaldees to Cannan,
Six: Akhenaten, Prophet of the one God,
Seven: Joseph, the Bough from Egypt to Israel,
Eight: The Moses Mystery,
Nine: David and Solomon, Divine Sons,
Ten: The Miraculous Fish, Symbol of the Self,
Eleven: The Coming of the Christ.,
Twelve: Jesus the Man and Christ the Self,
Thirteen: Christ into Eternity,
Conclusion: Jesus—or His Equivalent—Is Coming Again,
Bibliography,
Index,