Jung: Three steps toward a revolution

Saturday, September 5, 2015

9:30 a.m. Dr. Jung, am I right or even partially right in equating the guys upstairs – the cosmic internet – with what you called the collective unconscious?

That is a stark way to pose a complicated question. Yes, it does serve to bring it to a point, but perhaps it leads us in the wrong direction. A better question would be, what is a more productive way to conceptualize man as a part of a wider universe? More productive, I mean, than a view that assumes separation, that takes “time” to be what it appears, that regards the immaterial as less important, less “real” than the easily perceived outside world.

Big reframing.

Of course, but nothing else will do. Sometimes you cannot take two small leaps as if they were one larger one. That is a way to fall to your death!

In this case, you see, we must insist that humans and their minds are not absolutely separate, regardless of what common sense dictates.

We must look at life as a series of time-moments, recognizing that one’s perception of time depends, as you have been told, upon one’s state of awareness.

We must see that no sense can be made from an incomplete inventory of reality.

Each of these changes would be revolutionary enough, but they would not lead to a new coherent picture, because each taken alone would lead to contradictions. Together, however, they form a whole.

We can go into it any time when you are fresh.

[I had already spent a couple of hours bringing in material and typing it up.]

All right. Promising. Thank you. I am enjoying The Portable Jung edited by Joseph Campbell. It is helpful to have an outline of what you set out.

Yes, provided that you remember that I have had time and experience enough to change my mind on some matters, and I am freer to express my whole mind than I could be when I needed to preserve my scientific reputation lest all my work go down as unscientific.

I understand.

[Later: It seems to me, reading about the collective unconscious, that it is not un-conscious or sub-conscious, but in a way super-conscious. It is wider, deeper, more resourceful, active on its own in areas beyond our experience and nearly beyond our understanding. If that doesn’t describe the non-3D as experienced by a given individual, I don’t see how it doesn’t.]

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