November 17, 2019
There is only a limited amount we can accomplish toward transformation by thinking about it—it is more a matter of experience, of finding a “deep knowing.” This does not mean we should not think about it, however, or that there is no value in trying to understand intellectually. There is value. It is just important to remember that thinking is only one piece of the process, and not the final piece.
Carl Jung and transformation
With that being said, how can we approach understanding transformation by thinking about it? To begin, we must recognize that the human psyche is a wild and mysterious thing, and we do not understand it at all. Nobody does. As noted philosopher and cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor (his university’s site says he is, “the world’s leading philosopher of mind”) said recently: “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious.” Or as Alva Noë, one of the leading thinkers in the field of consciousness studies (Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences) said: “After decades of concerted effort on the part of neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers,” the only agreement about how the brain can make us conscious, how it can give rise to “sensation, feeling, subjectivity” is: “We don’t have a clue.”
Because of this, any concepts we create about our inner world are almost as likely to mislead as clarify. Yet if we are going to think about what goes on inside, or talk about it with others, we have to have concepts. One guide who I have found valuable in this is psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung practiced psychology and psychiatry for 60 years, studied all aspects of it throughout his life, and had several transformative experiences himself—leading to a view that incorporated the relationship between the psychological, the spiritual, and the transformational. (Actually, in practice it is not possible to separate these three things.)
To begin, two short Jungian quotes: “Life is a short pause between two mysteries.” And: “The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me,” and answering this question is my “life task, which I accomplish only by effort and with difficulty.”
Jung was especially focused on how each of us can live a fulfilling life in this world—in contrast to some of the more transcendent models of life’s purpose. Jung certainly recognized the importance of having a relationship with the mystery, but he also believed it was our task to live our individual lives in this world of time.
In his own life, Jung had several major transformations. One occurred when he broke with Freud (he was seen by many before the break as Freud’s successor). Because of this break, he had to endure the wrath of Freud and the Freudian community for years thereafter. The key disagreement involved Jung’s growing sense that Freud’s insistence on the sexual drive as the center of life was too narrow. Jung believed this drive was part of us, but he became increasingly interested in the symbols of human history that suggested there were other important currents. Thus, about the time Jung reached mid-life, he finished and published Symbols of Transformation. This book is the first formal statement of his strong interest in mythology. (An interest that eventually had a dramatic impact on our culture, for Jung’s work was one of the formative influences on Joseph Campbell, who popularized mythological thought—leading, among many other things, to many novels and to the Star Wars movies and their successors.)
Jung’s break with Freud also created a profound struggle in Jung’s own psyche, lasting many years. One result was that Jung developed his model of psychological types to explain this conflict to himself, and this model is still widely used today as the inspiration for numerous psychological tests, such as the Myers-Briggs personality test. For Jung, this crisis included profound depression and perhaps even a mental breakdown. He experienced a horrible “confrontation with the unconscious,” had disturbing visions, and worried that he was “menaced by a psychosis” and was “doing a schizophrenia.”
Finally, though, he came to the conclusion that all his inner turmoil might have a purpose, so he started working with the difficult images and thoughts. One night, he had a dream/vision of falling into the abyss, and he made a conscious decision to fall completely, to fully face the demons and see what would happen. Fortunately, this complete letting go into the abyss didn’t destroy him, and he started working with his visions more intentionally. (This decision gave rise to the process now known as “active imagination,” and it led to the creation of the mysterious Red Book.)
It took a number of years, but Jung finally came out on the other side of this difficult time, and was a much stronger and wiser person for it. A few of the conclusions that arose from his inner work: “When an inner conflict or psychological problem is not made conscious, it tends to happen to us from outside as fate.” Another way of saying this is that we project on other people and on the world what is inside our own psyche, but unconscious to us, and therefore we make it more likely that what we are anxious about or fear will happen.
“It is exactly where you feel the most frightened and most in pain that the opportunity for growth lies.” (This is a hard truth to take in, but fairly self-explanatory.)
“Among all of my patients in the second half of life, that is to say, over 35, there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he or she had lost that which living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain this religious outlook. This of course has nothing whatsoever to do with a particular creed or membership of a church.”
This last sentence makes clear that the way we use the word “spiritual” today is close to how Jung is using the word “religious,” and similar to how AA uses “Higher Power.” Thus it is fascinating to note that advice Jung gave to an alcoholic patient about the need for a spiritual outlook was passed on to Bill W., who overcame his own alcoholism by calling on a Higher Power, and this idea then became one of the core building blocks of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is equally interesting to note that Jung gained this view partly through his encounter with the thought of William James. (Fascinating how powerful ideas make their way through human culture!)
A second great transformation occurred in Jung’s life when he was 68. After a heart attack, he was in and out of consciousness for several weeks, during which time he had a near-death experience, and during this time he was transformed. (Interestingly, much of his best writing came after this experience.) Following this time, he emphasized more and more that the individual must learn to live in relation to something larger than the ego self. For Jung, getting in touch with higher levels was crucially important, even in psychological work:
“The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. The fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology.”
For Jung, however, doing this work was not just about focusing on the positive. Rather, you do it “not by imagining figures of light but making the darkness conscious.” A person “who has not passed through the inferno of the passions will never overcome them.”
A question of identity
The central question about transformation is one of identity: Who am I, really? Where will I organize my identity? What definition will I hold of “me?” The movement of transformation is a shift of identity from a smaller to a larger view, from an ego-centered outlook to one that includes more.
But working with identity is difficult, partly because there are many different ways I can think of “me,” of who I am. An image I have found valuable is that of a river into which many streams flow. Some streams come up from underground to join the river, others flow in from the surface. Rain and snow fall from overhead. In this river there are rapids and calm pools. Storms come and go. Floating down the river, buffeted by every change of current, there “I” am. This “me,” with which I usually identify, is the ego (using modern psychology’s term). This is the “me” that is trying to put together a coherent life in the world. The whole river is the world, but it is also the larger me, and the interface between the small me and the larger me is the collective unconscious (perhaps the currents of wind and water, if this doesn’t stretch the image too far). Surrounding it all, interpenetrating it all, existing as All, is the numinous, the infinite (words, of course, fail here).
For each of us, when we are young, the “small me” is mostly carried along by currents from the world around us while it tries to fulfill the urges and desires that are constantly rising up from within (urges for food, safety, comfort, sex, power, etc.). The work when we are young is to try to balance pressures from the culture against all the urges and desires coming up from within. According to lots of wise folks, the best way to do this is to make all the conflicting currents as conscious as we can, so we can make the best possible choices about how to understand things and how best to spend our time and energy. If we do this pretty well, we create a somewhat coherent ego self that has some agency, that can maneuver in the river.
The more we understand ourselves—the currents inside as well as the forces pushing and pulling from outside—the better we will be at making healthy, conscious choices (and implementing them), and the more we will be able to follow that which is truly valuable and important for our lives. Contrarily, unless we become conscious of these forces and develop the power to make and implement choices, we will be flotsam and jetsam bobbing down the river of life.
A model of the inner world
Another way to think about the inner world is to use one of the developed conceptual models, and there are several good ones in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, mystical Christianity, and Jewish mystical thought such as Kabbalah. More recent models are the enneagram, the Gurdjieff work, and Roberto Assagioli’s images of how the psyche works. All these are valuable, and I do not think any one is “best.” In the following, however, I will rely more on Jung’s model, with a few inclusions from other systems as well as thoughts that arise from my own experience.
So, in thinking about who you are, you can identify with:
1. Your body—you can think you are primarily your physical body, that it is the center of who you are—its shape and form, its pleasures and pains.
2. Your basic urges and desires—we all have urges and drives, for sex, safety, comfort, food (what Freud called the id drives)—and you might experience these drives and desires as the center or who you are and what your life is about.
3. Your superego—to again use Freud’s term, the part of you that was enculturated to follow the rules of society. Thus, you can primarily think of yourself as the one who does what you are “supposed to do.”
4. You can identify with the different feeling or mood states as they arise—your angry self, your fearful self, poor pitiful me, your confident self, your grandiose self, insecure self, skeptical self, scholarly self, etc. As each of these currents comes up, you can believe this one is who you are. (It is amazing how easy it is to identify with one current and then another, without remembering that just a few minutes ago you saw yourself quite differently.)
5. You can identify with one or more roles you play—doctor, care-giver, teacher, rebel, good friend, life of the party, sexual athlete, outcast, beautiful person, trend-setter, and on and on. It is very easy to fall into the belief that these roles constitute your identity. The work is to recognize that you perform various roles, but who you are is beyond these roles.
6. You can give yourself over to one or more archetypes and think of yourself as—Nurturer, Mother-figure, Boss, Good Spouse, Artist, Precocious Child, Warrior, King, Queen, etc. (There is a subtle difference between identifying with a role versus an archetype, which I will not try to explain here.)
7. You can identify with the ego self—the part of you that manages your life, tries to balance all the above currents, thinking things through and making decisions about how to use your time and energy.
Pause for Reflection: What is the ego? Many volumes have been written about this question, but there are still no agreed-upon answers. For now, see if you can find your ego. Where is it? What do you think it is? How do you separate it out from the rest of “you?”
For me, the ego is not a “thing” that can be pinned down, but is ephemeral, a vague concept. The simplest (but certainly not definitive) way to think about my ego is that it is made up of the stories I have about myself and my life—stories about who I am, what the world is like, and what is important. What my ego does is organize my life and fulfill as many goals and ambitions as it can based on these stories—in my career, relationships, and leisure activities. Simultaneously, it deals with my fears and anxieties, commitments and aversions—trying to navigate all the competing interests between them as best it can.
Thus, when I seek success, power, fame, prestige, personal wealth—these goals are held and pursued by my self-centered ego. And they have provided much of the energy for my life. Examine yourself. If you want anything, isn’t it usually the ego that does the wanting? Even if you want enlightenment, liberation, to be saved, to go to heaven, isn’t it the ego that wants these things. If you want to be a good person, fix the world, or help people, aren’t these usually ego motivations as well. This is not bad, simply the nature of being human.
Something more
Several currents of modern and post-modern thought would limit your identity to some combination of the above seven levels. But I believe you have the potential to be much more. There are higher levels of identity into which you can move:
8. The Witness or Observer—this is the part of you that is able to step back and stand in a place from which you (but not the ego you) is able look at your life, your ego self, and others without judgments, opinions, or without taking positions. Haven’t you experienced this at times? This is the heart of much of today’s mindfulness training.
9. The Higher Self—the part of you beyond your small self, beyond your ego self—and beyond the witness. This is the you that does not simply witness but can provide deeper guidance and a sense of what is truly meaningful for your life. It is the still small voice within, the voice of conscience that says, “Follow your own drummer, not the crowd,” or “Don’t do that, even though it is popular.” It is the voice that calls you to the hard task and provides a sense of the values that are truly important for your life. How can you separate this from the ego? It is complicated, and usually involves a lifetime’s work, but one clue given by Jung is that, if a feeling inside suggests moving in a way that seem like a “defeat for the ego,” that is a sign you are having an “encounter with the Self,” your Higher Self.
10. The Numinous, the Tao, the Transcendent, the Infinite, God, the Divine, the Ultimate, Nirvana, Great Spirit, Buddha-nature, Ein Sof.
Here, at the tenth level, we reach what Jung believed to be the final goal of transformation:
“This is the decisive question for man: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. If we understand and feel that here in this life we have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.”
Jung, however, did not think the goal was to disengage from the world, as some spiritual traditions suggest. Rather, he emphasized the importance of developing a healthy “Ego/Self axis”—in which the ego turns to the Higher Self for guidance in finding the best way to relate to the infinite and for how to implement that guidance into the living of one’s life. In this model, the Higher Self is the link to the Numinous dimension. In Jung’s view, the goal of “individuation” is to become a whole human being, not a perfect one. To become whole is not easy, however: it requires making the darkness in oneself conscious, getting to know all sides of oneself, and integrating everything in a healthy way.
On this path, you do not disown parts of yourself. Since you can never really get rid of any part of yourself, if you despise some part of yourself, the result will only be to drive that part into your shadow, where it will wreak havoc on your life. If you haven’t owned your own contributions to what is going on, you will blame negative outcomes on others, or on fate. On the other hand, if you get to know your shadow side, you will be able to find a way to integrate all the energy it holds in a healthy way into your life. From a clear, conscious awareness, you will gradually bring all the parts of yourself into balance and harmony, learning to use all your energies appropriately—like a dancer flowing with life and moving in perfect harmony with all the currents within and without.
What does science say?
If you are concerned that Jung’s views (with my additions) do not fit with modern scientific thought, consider that in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists, Ken Wilber shows that in the philosophical writings of the founders of modern physics (Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, de Broglie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Arthur Eddington), all explored transcendental ideas beyond their scientific work. The reason seems to be that this was the only path open to them if they wished to acquire a deeper understanding about life and living, for science does not deal with the incredibly important issues of meaning, values, beauty, love, or the context within which science takes place. Consider these words from Albert Einstein:
“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness.”
And these words from Max Planck, another of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and the first voice in the creation of quantum theory:
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: … All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
Reflection: If Einstein, Max Planck, and Jung, among so many others, felt there was some mysterious force moving behind the world we see, what might be the importance of this for you? And if you choose to assume for a moment this is true, how might you carry forward the process of transforming yourself so as to be in harmony with the highest levels of your possibilities in relation to that mystery?
David