Mostly quotes from Jung on Active Imagination

Wednesday June 29, 2016

F: 3:45 a.m. Yesterday I compiled the Rita and TGU transmissions we have received – or the conversations we have held, however you want to look at it – and it appears that we have enough for yet another book, and I’m getting the sense that maybe it’s time to stop, or pause, and work on making a more concise statement. I guess we’ll see. I’ve had that feeling before. But maybe others could do that, and maybe others can’t do what I’m doing. Only, it seems too open-ended to be more than a continuing process.

TGU: Or perhaps your work is more in the nature of example and encouragement, and it is for others to construe meaning as they can.

F: Could be. I don’t know. I am reading Jung on Active Imagination and making a few notes. I see that he is writing – and the editor is compiling – with something in mind different from what I am thinking about. He and she are considering active imagination as a technique toward self-knowledge; I am too, only I am thinking of it as opening the means of communication rather than of transforming the psyche.

TGU: And how different is that, really?

F: Oh, I know. And yet – as you know – very different. People can’t use it my way if they aren’t pretty stable to begin with. But if they’re sort of common-sensical about it, it can help a lot.

TGU: And they’ll have their own internal resources steering them away from traps, land-mines, and dead-ends.

F: I think maybe I will type up the quotations I’ve written here, and then hope to write my review of John Nelson’s novel I, Human, for New Dawn magazine. And then we’ll see.

TGU: Bring to other things the resolution and habitual application you have brought to these conversations, and things will be accomplished. There is no need to rush.

F: Okay.

[From Tuesday, June 28, 2016]

4:35 a.m. I need to write a review of John’s I, Human, and I’d just as soon have some help with it. So, anybody who can help get John’s message across, I’m asking for assistance.

[There follows a page of suggestions on the approach.]

3:30 p.m. Well, today didn’t go as I’d hoped. Maybe we can still get in a session.

TGU: Or maybe we have come, with yesterday’s session, to another place to pause. You have Rita’s second book coming out. It is not too soon to compile her third and perhaps final book, then you can see if what we have done holds together.

F: I could wish we could come up with a more finished product.

TGU: Every means of presentation has the defects of its qualities – but, bear in mind, that also means it has the qualities; it isn’t just defects.

F: True enough.

 

Quotes from Jung on Active Imagination, omitting the step of adding quote marks around each passage by instead prefacing each quote with a “Q:” (to indicate that it is an exact quotation).

Q: When I endured these assaults of the unconscious I had an unswerving conviction that I was obeying a higher will, and that feeling continued to uphold me until I had mastered the task. P. 25

Q: After the deed I felt … the grief a man feels when he is forced to sacrifice his ideal and his conscious attitudes. This identity and my heroic idealism had to be abandoned, for there are higher things than the ego’s will, and to these one must bow. P. 28

Q: Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life…. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche…. [T]here is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me. P. 30

Q: When I look back upon it all today and consider what happened to me during the period of my work on the fantasies, it seems as though a message had come to me with overwhelming force. There were things in the images which concerned not only myself but many others also. It was then that I ceased to belong to myself alone, ceased to have the right to do so. P 36

Q: However, it was clear to me from the start that I could find contact with the outer world and with people only if I succeeded in showing – and this would demand the most intensive effort – that the contents of psychic experience are real, and real not only as my own personal experience, but as collective experiences which others also have…. I did all in my power to convey to my intimates a new way of seeing things. I knew that if I did not succeed, I would be condemned to absolute isolation. P. 37

Q: The dream brought with it a sense of finality. I saw that here the goal had been revealed. One could not go beyond the center. The center is the goal, and everything is directed toward that center. P. 40.

Q: The problem is identical with the universal question: How does one come to terms with the unconscious?

This is the question posed by the philosophy of India, and particularly by Buddhism and Zen. Indirectly, it is the fundamental question, in practice, of all religions and all philosophies. For the unconscious  is not this thing or that; it is the Unknown as it immediately affects us.

The method of “active imagination,” hereinafter described, is the most important auxiliary for the production of those contents of the unconscious which lie, as it were, immediately below the threshold of consciousness, and, when intensified, are the most likely to irrupt spontaneously into the conscious mind. [He cites three dangers in the process.] … The method of active imagination, therefore, is not a plaything for children. The prevailing undervaluation of the unconscious adds considerably to the dangers of this method. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that it is an invaluable auxiliary for the psychotherapist. Pp. 42-43

Q: In the last resort it is highly improbable that there could ever be a therapy that got rid of all difficulties. Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health. What concerns us here is only an excessive amount of them. P. 46

Q: It might be objected that this treatment of the dream involves suggestion. But this ignores the fact that a suggestion is never accepted without an inner readiness for it, or if after great insistence it is accepted, it is immediately lost again. A suggestion that is accepted for any length of time always presupposed a marked psychological readiness which is merely brought into play by the so-called suggestion. P. 48

F: Which last sounds to me like, “Does it resonate?” And that’s as far as I have gotten. I pass all this along for what it’s worth to you.

 

13 thoughts on “Mostly quotes from Jung on Active Imagination

  1. Thanks for the Jung! It works well with your material. I think I’ll get the book. And thanks, as always, for your “resolution and habitual application.”

  2. Yes, most definitely respecting more and more how you are doing this, and even a bit of envy for the admirable “resolution and habitual application”.

    I have been going through a period of emotional turmoil, and now that I am emerging I notice I have gained some insight into how emotions are one aspect of that process of choosing, and what they relate to and so forth. A fairly long and complicated matter. I have been writing down something in the mornings and noticing that just reading the pages I wrote the day(s) before help me to start getting the next delivery going. Nowhere near to Frank’s fluency of interaction, but the stuff that is coming relates to a fairly wide range of stuff I have in my head. And then there is the resistance. Some part of me just finds the downloading/writing part incredibly hairy. But now that I say this, I feel it at the computer, but in the morning writing in my journal with pen&paper the resistance does not come up – I am just grateful for the wonderful views am getting.

    One thing I keep thinking: would it be possible to make some kind of collaborative effort? The other side seems to consider that things need to be written down, and I can see the point, so I try to do that. But there is also something going on with our interactons that cross-fertilizes each other’s processes, or so it seems to me. This is a strange thing, as we need to live with what comes up. But reading what you’all write is for me a similar spark that gets me going as reading my own things in the morning to get me started. I just notice that I can’t really be “on” for both, just time and energy is not sufficient, as there’s all the rest of life, too. This collaborative thing bugs me because this is one of the very first things I somehow “got”: for seeing to be accurate, it has to be done in groups. Or – this popped into my head – maybe I got it from Castaneda. Be that as it may, I feel the truth of it.

    And one more thing: I have loved Jung all my life. Just have had to read Freud for a course in histoory of psychology, and I have had to change my mind about scorning him. Reading his text has completely driven home to me the dreamlike quality of reality! The dream-structures he describes are exactly how we live our life! Even the fallout between Jung and Freud is one strange dream-sequence that flipped a personal issue into the centerfield and the vast, toweringly important theme of unconscious (non-3D for us) become just a topic for a battle of theories. A sporty drama of who is winning…an opportunity to miss the center ot the whole thing. So, I hereby recant and withdraw my former attitude about Freud. His insight is impeccable, but like we all, just getting one part of the picture. And I still love Jung. And his texts have a similar effect of sparking the inner knowing to movement. Sorry for the million typos, too tired to proofread now.

    1. A couple of quick comments.
      1) I too have been getting the strong urgings to make this more of a collaborative effort. I asked a while ago if anyone knew of a piece of software that would enable it, but really we don’t need the software so much as we need someone to install it! If there were a new form of blog or something that would do it, i think it would be a good idea.
      2) Jung never lost his respect for Freud, you know, and always gave him credit for his ground-breaking work.
      3) Thanks for the commpliments, and if my example helps you to produce, so much the better.

  3. No comments on the collaboration front…One way of experimenting with it might be that Frank would ask for a seed from his guys, and we could simply comment on it in the comments section. That might show if there is interest or flow to make it into something further. I am noticing that for me, if I try using questions, I get totally blocked. What works for me is letting thoughts flow in as much freedom I can give. Just using the previous material as kick-off if nothing comes of itself.

  4. Thank you Frank and Kristiina.
    Last night “picking up” your thoughts ( Kristiina as well ) about Carl Jung etc.
    We all know ( at least by now ) thoughts are frequencies in motion. All about us are frequencies and vibrations. And we are capable ” to manifest ” ourselves into the density of materialized ” forms.”

    Hm, last night decided to watch a swedish documentary about haunted areas and the later houses placed upon the same historic places.
    This time around the program and the reporter was called to come and visiting an old swedish Manor with a big property. And the area very close by the Norwegian Border.
    Sweden and Norway has a FAR-Stretched border in commonness ( it is not ” a border ” as you americans knows it, more as between your own U.S. national states. We have not used any passports between us here in Scandinavia, but nowadays we are forced to do it because of the new worldly circumstances.
    In the viking-times it was not any “border” between the two`s, because mostly it was the same as the tribal territories as among the indians in north-america. And a whole lot of “kings” within each valley who fought against their many half-brothers to become ” kings” over their neighbours properties.
    Well, back to the last night program about ” THE INVISIBLE. ”

    The owners of the Manor ( it is a big property, the main house, as well as with several other buildings there, and a paddock for the horses ).
    A young couple, who was living there with their children and parents, and some others in the family likewise.
    BUT they have had ” visitors ” who or whom they could not ” see ” but HEAR within their houses and OUTDOORS likewise. IN the middle of the night they could wake up by horses at a gallop, and when looking out of the windows nothing to be seen of course.
    Even upon the roof they could hear the gallop and scratching of claws.

    At night the unseen folks wandering outdoors talking and laughing below their bedroom windows likewise. And the many doors opens and closing when nobody there.
    The family living there told at the second floor in the main-house nobody could sleep at night at all. They told SOME of the energies which is felt there was very scary, and others downstairs not felt as scary as at the upper floor.

    Okay, then one of the famous brave mediums was called forth by the programmer and the reporter, to come and see what is ” going on ” at the Manor and the surrounding area there.
    The medium was an englishman, called Terry, and lives in Sweden. He was speaking english.
    Terry was met by the female reporter at the Railway Station in Karlstad (a city in Sweden, and a popular shopping area for the norwegians).

    ALREADY there Terry could ” feel ” and notice a HUNTSMAN with a rifle in his hands estimated by Terry, to be a man from the 18th century.
    In the car along the road ( approximately half an hours drive to the Manor ), Terry told he could watch the 18th century hunter with the rifle behaving hostile toward him and Terry told ” the huntsman ” wanted them in leaving the property.

    And when Terry and the reporter came to the Manor and looking at the surrounding area, he told to see battles there from AD 1120 ( the vikings of course ), a battle between the norwegian and the swedish vikings. It is told in the history books as well.

    BUT, here comes what REALLY gave the reporter ( me as well ), and the folks living there a BIG SHOCK when Terry told A DEMON made the noises on the ROOF…. therefore the scary scratching noises upon the roof …. and nobody dared sleeping in the bedrooms upstairs.

    The reporter asking Terry what a Demon was ? And eventually WHAT making a demon to manifest ?
    AND what Terry told about it making sense to me, because I have experienced something similar myself when living in a remote historic valley once upon a time, and I have NEVER had any explanation to it back then.

    Terry told IT IS ACCUMULATED NEGATIVE ENERGIES THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES FROM THE AREA; as well as the many FIGHTINGS ABOUT THE PROPERTY. THE HATE, THE ENVY: ALL THE NEGATIVITY MANIFESTED…… Which ” takes on ” horrible forms as demons in the end. Manifesting as VISIBLE demons so to speak.
    And then have thought about INDIA, and the so-called ” Far East ” godly figures, and all the grotesque temple figures there. They are looking horrible to me and scaring the folks to death ( me as well ).
    Terry also told if THE FEAR takes ” a hold on you, ” the more you are “feeding” the demon because it is as FEAR the demon manifests. One more thing Terry underlined were how difficult it is ” to remove ” a longtime ” accumulated ” demon.
    Terry managed to release ” the Huntsman ” with his rifle, and also the Vikings there, but he did NOT managed to get rid of the scary energy and the scratching upon the roof.
    Still nobody sleeping in the bedrooms upstairs.
    The reporter told they had to come back with Terry in another program to see what happens then.

    LIFE, what IS ( or what is not ) ?

    It is more between heaven and earth Horatio, b & b, Inger Lise.

  5. The collaboration idea (which I think people are kind of doing with their comments) resonates for me not because I feel I have lots to contribute but because I think we’re not students any more. We’re all teachers, and maybe this is part of the stepping up.

  6. On the subject of collaboration.

    It is interesting that being in time-space makes collaboration more difficult. Only recently with the Internet are we able to have timely and asynchronous communications. Asynchronous is a very useful characteristic; as it would be nearly impossible for the even the people who comment on this site arrange to be on a telephone at the same time. At least it would be inconvenient. The asynchronous aspect also gives us time to think and to digest what others are saying.

    It seems to me that Frank’s site is already set up to aggregate comments by topic. Each posting generally focuses a theme, and those that want to comment can do so at any time after the posting.

    What is missing of course is the aggregation of what has been posted before on that same theme, and the associated comments. Late last year when I was creating some material for posing on this site, I would often go back and word search The Sphere and the Hologram, all of Rita’s posted material as well as the Hemingway material. That is relatively straightforward if every posting is added to a common document in Word or Pages. It is easy to fall behind in doing that, particularly when also working with other material, including my own.

    Having said this, I believe there are a number of important topics that run throughout the material, and it would be very beneficial if we could simply recopy it into an aggregated document by topic.

    One way that could be accomplished is to finish compiling all the recent Rita, Hemingway and TGU material into a single document. I could do that in a few days time. Or, of course, Frank could do it.

    The second step would be to agree on a list of major themes; for example “reincarnation”. All of us that have been reading all this material could suggest what they consider to be the main themes. Frank of course would have to finalize, or at least agree on the list.

    Then we could determine which of the reader/volunteers would be willing to go through the search process, and sift out those aspect relevant to a specific topic. Each volunteer would be sent a copy of the total aggregated document.

    We could start with a small number of topics and see how it goes.

    What would be done with the resulting aggregations would be totally up to Frank, and he could determine if it might eventually be useful as a publication in that kind of format.

    I would volunteer to complete the aggregation if Frank doesn’t already have it in that form, and would certainly be willing to tackle a few topics.

    Again, this process is not intended, in this first stage to produce new material, but simply reorganize what exists to this point. Adding to it later is certainly possible.

    Just suggestions on my part.
    John

    1. This sounds like it might work, but i need to think about it. The most recent Rita / TGU material (Feb. thru June) makes up a book I am calling Rita 3. I need to consider if I should be circulating a concatenated file, evne though, of course, you all have the separate files already. Let me ponder this for a bit.

  7. Ahem, I ([sadly] need to) have a job and (gladly) even hold on to some resemblance of life. So perusing all of the archives sounds rather time-consuming, and adding comments here and there sounds not very much collaborative. I guess I am a minority of one with the seed-text and comments idea. I am just trying to figure out something that would not add a ginormous workload on anyone. Mostly because joint effort is not anyone’s own, so typically no-one wants to work their ass off for it. How to keep it in a size that it could get rolling? If I think about the comments so far, it seems to grow a bit like snow-flake so that we all have different directions in commenting. Making it coherent in a normal way would be a horrible task.

    On sw: there’s something called Trello, free for basic use and can be accessed with google account, some info here http://lifehacker.com/5839942/trello-makes-project-collaboration-simple-and-kind-of-fun
    But I don’t think we are at the level of needing software yet. Most collaboration dries up for lack of participation.

  8. I agree with you, Kristina. I was thinking of a conversation that starts ‘now’ and becomes on-going (or not).

  9. After declaring I have so little time, watching this: https://youtu.be/K6GU1OV_OeE?list=PLGHizUoqdWEJmX9GIveMKdQk99eeGKIZS very interesting. And I remember from morning: psychotherapy/analysis is one way of attempting to collaborate in seeing the other side – the thing that is called unconscious in this context.

    I really enjoy reading&watching vonFranz after Freud. She is like clear water after the stuffy density of Freud. Have been reading her Problem of Puer Aeternus, on narcissism. A problem of our times! And Freud declared his method can not help narcissists. I have my ideas about why…

  10. Kirstiina and Jane,
    Of course, the suggestion to consolidate material around specific topics was not intended to replace the natural spontaneity of conversation triggered by the posted material. I found more meaning when I could gather the time dispersed information into a form that could be reread in a short span. It’s a matter of dealing with our memory limitations, holding onto new ideas, and growing by building on concepts previously digested. I believe there is a lot in between the lines, and that’s more easily discovered when all the lines are in one place and time!
    John

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