Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Equation: Imagery and Concepts
The General Purpose of the Equation
The equation appears to be a mathematical formula, yet it describes psychological states. Jung believes that numbers or their algebraic equivalents can serve other roles:
Equations, for instance, that were invented as pure mathematical formulae have subsequently proved to be formulations of the quantitative behavior of physical things. Conversely owing to their individual qualities, numbers can be vehicles for psychic processes in the unconscious. The structure of the mandala, for instance, is intrinsically mathematical.
Jung states that the mathematical equation in Aion has two functions as descriptive of psychic processes: the equation is itself a symbol of the Self and it illustrates a process of transformation that occurs within the Self.
The equation is a symbol of the Self as it is circular, which is a common representation of wholeness or unity. This is reinforced because the circle also represents a dynamic process leading to greater wholeness (i.e., from A to B to C to D). The second function of the equation is to depict the process that takes place within the Self. The Self, Jung explained, is a mysterious phenomenon that arises spontaneously in the "psyche" that "confronts the subject independently of him. ..." When that mysterious phenomenon arises, it is often perceived as the appearance of God or an image of God. Jung says that the image of God, the Imago Dei as he called it, is a universal phenomenon that is perceived as an objective fact in the psyche as the "God-image is not something invented, it is an experience that comes upon a man spontaneously — as anyone can see for himself unless he is blinded to the truth by theories and prejudices."
For Jung, the Imago Dei arising in the psyche is not related to the existence of a transcendent Deity or a God in heaven. Instead, he uses the Imago Dei as a symbol or archetype of wholeness that is the objective experience of that mystery in the psyche that we often call God. The consequence is that the term "God" is frequently interchanged in his writings with the Self. He adds that the use of the term "God" in addition to pointing to this unified wholeness is a reminder that the Self has a numinous (supernatural or religious) character. Jung's use of the word "God" in the context of the Self is not therefore a statement of his belief in a transcendent Deity but recognition of the mystery of the power of the Self in the psyche. Jung was very clear that this is what he means: "I speak exclusively of the God image." When he does speak of "God" in a biblical sense, it concerns the myths, structures, and anthropomorphic statements about the God-image without reference to God's existence as a transcendent Deity. Jung is often accused of being a heretic because he makes God exclusively a psychological construct and does not refer to a transcendent Deity. Jung's response was always that God indeed exists in the psyche and to say more is deifying psychic structures and anthropomorphic images.
As to the meaning of a process of transformation within the Self, Jung is not explicit as to why the Self or the Imago Dei changes; how indeed does the Self or the God image in the psyche transform? The answer is contained in a fundamental theme in Jung's writings that the God image is initially dormant or unconscious in the psyche and gradually becomes more accessible or conscious.
The notion of the God image being initially "unconscious" is the starting point of the equation. Marie-Louise von Franz explains this concept in an interview about Aion:
Well, you find it all over in Jung's writings and there it says that God wants to become conscious in us. We are the most conscious being on this planet, I mean, relatively to all the other animals and plants, we are relatively highly conscious. Jung thinks that God is unconscious, not conscious.
Jung elucidates this concept in his work Answer to Job, where he asserts that Yahweh's testing of Job proves that he is not omnipotent:
The character thus revealed fits a personality who can only convince himself that he exists through his relations to an object. Such dependence on the object is absolute when the subject is totally lacking in self-reflection and therefore has no insight into himself.
The unconscious God, he states, "strives for total realisation — which in man's case signifies the attainment of total consciousness." In terms of the God-image in the psyche, this translates to the Self within us being initially unconscious; our Imago Dei is unformed and unknown, yet it desires to become manifest in the psyche and be understood. This striving of the unconscious God to become known takes place by the steps in the equation by a process that occurs in an individual's psyche. Marie-Louise von Franz expresses it this way: "so when he incarnates in us, that is an improvement in his state. In other words, we are God and within us he begins to see himself."
Barbara Hannah, in her Lectures on Aion, explains what such a process can offer for an individual:
Perhaps the clearest simile Jung uses is when he says that the human being must never forget he is only the stable in which the god is born. Yet we seem to have some choice as to whether we will function at that stable or not. Here we come to the crux of the process of individuation: are we willing to sacrifice the ego as a self-willed one-sided limited human consciousness and are we willing to realize the eternal Self and live its pattern instead of our own?
By the steps in the equation, the unconscious Self undertakes a process of transformation within itself as it becomes more conscious. The equation therefore is both a symbol of the Self and a process of the Self becoming conscious.
Explanation of "A"— The Anthropos
Jung states that the "A" at the top of the equation is the Anthropos in its "initial state" and, as the equation finally returns to A, in its "end state."
Jung uses "Anthropos" in several different ways in his writings: at one point as a mythical figure and at another as a figure in the Old Testament, but in the context of the equation he refers to the Anthropos as the spirit of God that desires to manifest.
In early Christianity, the Anthropos is compared with the earthly Christ, who has three aspects: the spirit of God in man as He is God in the form of a man, the bridge for the transmission of God's word to man, and also the signpost to salvation.
In the sense that the Anthropos is the spirit of God in man that has a desire to manifest, its presence at the start of the equation places the human being as the essential ground within which the process takes place. The process is dependent upon and occurs within the psyche of man. Jung states that this anthropocentric view of man as a willing participant in the manifestation of God can be traced as a basis for religious thought from the sixth century BC:
This revelation had steadily been asserting itself from the time of Ezekiel forward, and was now affecting everything in its path. It not only dominated Christian and Jewish theology and mystical practice, but manifested itself in a novel way in Gnosticism, and within the bosom of Islam, in Sufism.
The Anthropos or spirit of God in its initial state is dormant, without consciousness. Jung states that at this stage the Self exists only in its "originally unconscious totality," which is a pre-conscious, non-discriminating identity with the social group and the world. Jung adopts the phrase "participation mystique" from the anthropologist Levi-Bruhl to explain this concept, which he also referred to as a "dreaming innocence" where there is no conscious awareness of oneself as separate from that which is observed.
The Self is in this state of identity when there is no differentiation between the opposites: subject and object. The merger of subject and object amounts to unconsciousness as Jung explains:
Union of opposites is equivalent to unconsciousness, so far as human logic goes, for consciousness presupposes a differentiation into subject and object and a relation between them. Where there is no 'other' or it does not yet exist, all possibility of consciousness ceases. ... As the Godhead is essentially unconscious, so too is the man who lives in God.
The Anthropos is therefore the unconscious Self within the unconscious man that has the capacity to become conscious by the action of man in finding an "other" so there can be differentiation between subject and object.
The Anthropos is also in the equation as the "end state," where it returns to A at the end of the process. This symbolizes that the initial state of unconsciousness is transformed by the process in the equation to the end state of full consciousness. This is possible because the Anthropos, as the presence of the spirit of God in man, contains within it the potential for consciousness. This makes the Anthropos, when the process is complete, synonymous with a fully realized, conscious wholeness. In alchemy, this wholeness is represented by the "Rotundum," which is a perfectly symmetrical roundness that is the symbol of the fully conscious God or Self. Jung calls this the full manifestation of the "blessed God." This latter phrase, taken from the New Testament, is a reference to the realization of "sonship" or the effective transmission from God through the Son to man of God's essence. This is the full manifestation of the God image in the Anthropos.
The equation moves in a clockwise direction illustrating the passage from the unconscious Self or the dormant spirit of God in man represented by A through B, C, and D, which he calls "intermediate states." It then returns to A by what Jung calls the final "apocatastasis," a term for the restoration of consciousness that was there in potentia in A but was dormant. This circular process that results in consciousness is symbolized, for example, by the Snake eating its own tail: The uroboros.
In the text accompanying the equation, Jung summarizes the clockwise movement:
The Anthropos A descends from above through the Shadow B into Physis C (=serpent), and through a crystallization process D (=lapis) that reduces chaos to order, rises again to the original state....
Explanation of "B" — The Shadow
The Shadow B in the equation symbolizes the instinctual, lower nature of man into which the Anthropos descends. Jung explains that the Shadow:
... represents sublunary nature and in particular man's instinctual disposition, the 'flesh'^ — to use the Gnostic-Christian term — which has its roots in the animal kingdom, or, to be more precise, in the ream of warm-blooded animals.
"Sublunary" is a term for that which is of the earth and not of heaven, and "flesh" in Gnostic-Christian writings is conceived as the gross level of the body that functions on instinct without consciousness. These instincts in the gross level of the body are akin to animal instincts. The reference to the instinctual disposition of warm-blooded animals is reflected in this reminiscence of Jung that they can be compared to man because they have souls as well as instincts:
I loved all warm-blooded animals, who have souls like ourselves and with whom ... we have an instinctive understanding. We experience joy and sorrow, love and hate, hunger and thirst, fear and trust in common — all the essential features of existence with the exception of speech, sharpened consciousness, and science....
The descent depicted from A to B is therefore of the unconscious spirit of God descending into the animal instincts of the body. These instincts are not available to consciousness and therefore the first step suggests a descent of the pure unconscious spirit into unconscious instincts.
In Jung's analysis of instincts in his work Psychological Factors in Human Behaviour, he formulates that there is a "reflective instinct" in addition to the baser instincts through which our instinctual impulses can be turned inwards for reflection. This reflection yields the development of consciousness in the psyche:
Through the reflective instinct, the stimulus is more or less wholly transformed into a psychic content, that is, it becomes an experience: a natural process is transformed into conscious content.
An innate, natural instinct in the body is transformed by the reflective instinct into conscious content. Jung adds that the compulsiveness of an instinct produces a fear of becoming conscious that paradoxically creates a hint of the possibility of consciousness.
The descent into the Shadow B is the start of the process of consciousness. The spirit of God in man must descend to the instincts for its awakening. Jung emphasizes elsewhere that in the depths of the unconscious lie the "causal link with the world of instinct ... [u]nless the link be rediscovered no lapis and no self can come into being." The Lapis, as will be discussed, is the alchemical symbol of a stone that indicates the realization of wholeness. Jung made these statements in discussing a dream where the contents indicated that the dreamer had become more conscious and had taken "the plunge" in that he had accepted "the body and the world of instinct, the reality of the problems posed by love and life, and to act accordingly. This was the Rubicon that was crossed." The Shadow B has this dual or connective function as it is the symbol of what he called "the dark, chthonic world," the world of the unconscious, animal instincts and its relationship to the earth and animals, but it also offers what Jung referred to as the "initial psychic situation," the seeds for consciousness that are the foundations for the eventual merging of all parts of the equation in the return to A.
Explanation of "C" — Physis
Physis is the term used by the Pre-Socratics to describe nature or its substrate matter. It stands in direct opposition to Nous, the spirit of God in man. Nous represents the spirit of God as it is referred to as "pneumatic" or possessed of spirit and therefore is used to describe the primordial human spirit. Jung clarifies that Nous and Anthropos are the same.
"Nous" as pure spirit is only aware of itself and has been said to be thought lost in thinking itself. As there is no subject and no object, Nous is a union of all opposites, as was the case with the unconscious Anthropos. Nous, the spirit of God in man, cannot see itself unless there is a subject and an object and it has been said that "[f]or nous to be nous it must look beyond itself."
Nous and Physis are also, as employed by Jung in the equation, characters in a Gnostic myth in which Nous sees its reflection in a pool and, not know anything other than itself, seeks to merge with itself. It dives into the water and falls into nature. In the myth, Nous becomes infatuated with Physis (matter) and descends into the arms of Physis, where it is chained by love, leading to the birth of the seven metals of alchemy: "Nature presently laying hold of what it so much loved, did wholly wrap herself about it, and they were mingled, for they loved one another."
For Jung, the fall of the spirit of God into matter, the myth of Nous and Physis, is reflected in the modern age as materialism. The spirit of God in man has fallen in love with matter and the result of this, he states, has been that matter is the subject of scientific investigation and:
in this way the human mind has sunk deep into the sublunary world of matter, thus repeating the Gnostic myth of the Nous, who beholding his reflection in the depths below, plunged down and was swallowed in the embrace of Physis.
When the pure spirit of God that is Nous is buried in matter, it loses itself and cannot progress to consciousness. This is represented symbolically by images of the hero being swallowed up and detained in the belly of a whale or dragon. The spirit must therefore be extracted or freed from matter in order for it to transform. A process to recover the lost spirit buried in matter is the historical basis for alchemy.
Physis is the second stage in the equation for the transformation of the Anthropos. It is symbolically represented by Jung in the form of the Paradise Quaternio and it is in that context that its meaning in the equation can be understood. Jung represents the elements of Paradise as:
The Paradise Quaternio represents the Garden of Eden before the Fall, abundant with plants and animals and with four rivers of Paradise joined in the center. The counterbalance of the four rivers of paradise is said by Jung to represent an organizing principle that, by its symmetry, has the effect of stabilizing what otherwise appears as unorganized or, as Jung calls it, the instability in the cosmos "caused by chaos."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Becoming Whole"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Leslie Stein.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
