Jung on the Copernican Shift

Tuesday, September 8, 2015
F: 10:30 a.m. Dr. Jung, as soon as I open The Portable Jung to the section on the transcendent function, I again get the strong urge to discuss it with you. Are my intuitions about it wrong?
CGJ: Why do you think you are being prodded, and why you? You are certainly not the world’s most educated man, even on psychology. Indeed, most of what you know on the subject is the result of an instinct seizing upon what it recognizes from outside of ordinary life. But you are rooted in the non-3D, and you relate non-3D to 3D continually as you live, and one of your instinctive attractions was to Jung even before you opened your first book by Jung. Also, you and I “have history,” as they say. For that background, and because you are willing, and because of those whose attention you will get, we chose you to present a layman’s intuition on Jung as seen after reversing the places of sun and earth.
F: After making what I call the Copernican Shift, in other words. Putting the non-3D world rather than the 3D world at the center of the system.
CGJ: Were you unwilling, other ways could be found. In fact, other ways as well are being found – but this is well suited to your abilities.
F: Certainly it suits my inclinations.
CGJ: Very well, then. State your intuitions as yours (which will relieve the strain of wondering if you are mis-translating my intentions) and then perhaps we will comment.
F: In some ways, I think this proceeds from a hint I overheard in a Dion Fortune book, when she said offhand that what psychology knows, it had gotten hold of from the wrong end. I don’t know what she meant by that – and it is only now that it occurs to me to sometime ask her directly – but the sentence stuck like a burr.
Here is what I think. We in 3D are creatures of the non-3D, and our minds are not only connected to the minds in non-3D (hence our potential ease of access) but actually are a part of those minds.
But if we are part of them, they are part of us. We must experience them as part of ourselves, but an autonomous part that has its own laws, priorities, ways of doing things, viewpoint or viewpoints, conflicts with our conscious minds, conflicts and cooperation among themselves –what is that if not a description of the unconscious mind as experienced by our consciousness? All right so far?
CGJ: Provocative.
F: Yes, and don’t think I wasn’t aware of a certain flavor to my mind while I was writing that out, making connections as I went. It wasn’t just my ideas.
CGJ: No, but easier on you than your having to try not to misrepresent somebody’s thought.
F: Yes, I can see that. I’ve often felt it.
CGJ: So, since this is your second session today, let’s keep it short. If it were your task – it could be, but you probably will prefer to do other things – you could annotate my works carefully as you go and show how my evidence is equally, or more, evidence for your post-Copernican Shift view. That would not amount to your re-writing Jung, since Jung’s views – or anyway his public views – up until 1961 are on the record. But it would be a perfectly legitimate undertaking to use my experience and conclusions to look at things from another point of view.
F: I wish somebody would do it. I’d read such a book! Thank you for this and so much else.
CGJ: Turnabout is fair play. One good turn deserves another. One for all and all for one. English (and not only English, obviously) is full of clichéd expressions that nonetheless provide broad hints.
F: Okay. Not sure what that is in service of, but thanks, and see you next time.