human potential

Exercise 11 Retrieval and visit.

The point of the final exercise was for us to bring back information that could be validated right there. Bruce accomplished this by having us each write on a slip of paper the name of someone we knew who was deceased. We then each drew a slip and went to visit that person. While we did this, Bruce, in the background, gave us questions to ask and suggestions as to what kinds of distinctions to look for. At the end of the exercise, when we each in turn reported what we got, we did not tell the name until after Bruce asked, “does that sound familiar to anybody?”

[recreated from notes made with eyes closed during the exercise]

Immediately, almost before the exercise began, I had an impression of being in some city, among tall red brick buildings. Some kind of arch was involved. Bruce’s visualization has us walking through dark woods, but my own goes its stubborn separate way, and I’m walking in sunlight though a field at the edge of the woods, with the trees to my right. Strong impressions of green and moistness.

My helper, standing to my left, is Simon, who appears to be English, middle-aged. I tell him what I am there to do, and give him the name.

“I know him. Let’s go.” And with that we’re back in that same city scene, standing on the sidewalk of the street by those same buildings, with traffic going by.

There’s a man standing there. We shake hands. He is young – 30s? – vigorous, very definite. Strong, like a working-man. I use the words in my mind “bluff, downright.” He is a very direct person, humorous, matter-of-fact. Sort of easy-going, not temperamental. He is not in a suit, not in coveralls. Casually dressed, without much concern over what he’s wearing.

Twinkling eyes. Compact, vigorous. Healthy.

It isn’t a cold day, but not blazing hot either.

He seems to know who I am and why I’m there. He knows the guide, too. He is playing along with us, casual, amused. He knows he is dead, and it’s okay. He died worn out somehow, like a long sickness but not quite. Worn out. His heart gave out. He was older when he died, but he likes this age. I wonder if he was an architect, and this one of his buildings.

He liked bricks, and boats. Building things? Sailing around in motor boats?

Bruce asked us to get some memory that the submitter of the name would remember. I got a composite of things: outdoors. backpacking. Riding horses? The person is much younger, related to him.

Bruce asked us to get a favorite thing that he liked to do. I got, growing things. A favorite thing was flower window pots, flower boxes.

Bruce asked us to get a lifetime scene that the submitter of the name was in and would remember. I got an impression of lake, trees, mountains, horses. Campfire? Sleeping bags?

Bruce asked us to get evidence for the reality of the visit. I got a square glass fishbowl with one fish, on an orange shelf. [This turned out to refer to another submitter’s target.]

Bruce asked us to get a message. I got “Granite. Take it for granite,” which I took to be perhaps an inside joke.

I tried again, and got “you can camp and ride forever if you wish.”

The proof of the visit was to be an address, either 16 or 133 College Street, perhaps in Massachusetts.

As you can see, these were very definite impressions, that could very easily have been wrong. When Bruce asked if the description were familiar to anyone, one participant said it was his brother, and listed the reasons why. And indeed, that was the name I had drawn. He was very pleased, and so was I. I’d say eight of the ten participants got enough detail for the submitter to identify the contact. In a couple of cases, the amount of details reported was striking.

—-

I had submitted a request that someone visit my mother. As it happened, not only did the person who drew her name report, but another woman (who I knew ahead of time would be the one to contact mom) returned a report that sounded very much like mom and apparently not a lot like the name she had drawn.

The woman who had drawn mom’s name seemed to me to have missed the target. None of this sounded like my mother except the part about not liking loud noises. She said the helper was a Mexican man. Bright colors. Cheerful. Southwest US, desert-like. A house on a hill. Seated on a rocker on a porch. Older, hair grey and in a bun. Longish blue dress. An impression of a really high bridge. She didn’t speak. Peaceful. Didn’t like loud noises. Was by herself. Her hobby was rocks.

The woman who I had expected to report on mom found that the helper was a black man named Joe.

Kind of a round person. Short, curly red hair. Blue eyes. On a swing, younger. Her legs hurt. Diabetes. Maybe had a couple of toes amputated? An impression of a fish pond and white butterflies. She liked gardening and cooking. Laughed a lot, wore a dress with white ruffles. An impression that she shared joked with the submitter. Had a secret love of gambling.

Several hits here: Red hair, liked gardening and cooking, laughed a lot. I don’t know about the butterflies, but I know she had a fishpond by the house she grew up in, and that was a very happy household, i gather. Her legs would have hurt, and at the end, if she had lived, they would have had to take off her foot. But If she had a secret love of gambling, it was a well-kept secret!

In all, a great and productive workshop.

After lunch, second day.

Exercise 10 Belief System Retrieval exercise.

[recreated from notes made with eyes closed during the exercise]

This became very strange. Bruce was narrating a visualization that had us at a beach. Mine morphed into a road, instead. I walked up to a Midwest road and somehow wound up in a car, driving down a long winding road. I asked for a helper, and got George, situated somewhat to my left.

“Are you physical?” “No.” I got that the person I was looking for was “at nowhere.”

“George, is this a person who has no ideas about belief systems?”

We are outdoors. Open sky, desert, but it is not a definite place. Nobody in sight. The person was hiding in invisibility.

“I wish you to let me see you,” I said.. “Come visit with me. Why are you hiding?”

“I am not hiding, I’m right in front of you.”

“Why can’t I see you?”

“That’s your problem.”

“I wish to see you.”

“Then look.”

“I am willing to be assisted to see. George? How can I see?”

“Pretend.”

“Okay.” I pretend a woman in a bathing suit.

“Nope.”

I pretend an old man in overalls.

“Nope.”

“I don’t want to guess. Please show me.”

“You are seeing through me.”

Is this a pun? Is the being transparent? I think to ask: “Are you human?”

“Finally! No.”

“Do you connect with me somehow?”

“Yes,” I get, “but not via Earth.”

“Is part of myself not human?”

“Pre-human.”

“Are you the sand?”

“I am all of it.”

“The whole reality-scene?”

“Yes.”

Huh! “Can I help you somehow?”

“This is too static. I want change.”

“Did you call for me?”

“Called for assistance.”

“Would you want to be in a body? That is, like a person?”

Apparently it didn’t. It said that it was too limited as it was and wanted complications, but didn’t want a total change in being.

“I see. George, can you help me here? What can I do?”

“Remember love.”

“Oh yes.” As Bruce had taught us, I felt love and projected it to the being that I couldn’t perceive. I saw that it became an energy in the landscape, sacred-spot energy. I asked where, and was told somewhere that would verify it to me. It was going where I’m going, and we could work together. [Today, all there years later, I wonder if this meant Egypt, which I would visit 14 years later,  in 2019. No way to know, of course.]

I asked George his part in this. He said he was a moderator between humans and non-humans.

“Any verification?”

“You will know soon.”

“Can you help me move[to the next thing in my life]?”

“Yes. You will know.”

I knew that I was returning to normal life, the energy was going to the land, and George was on to his next “job.” I asked what belief system territory he worked in, and he told me it was outside the belief-system territories, at the interface between human and non-human energy systems.

So why did they choose me? It was for my sake, as much as for its. It could have used any of several, but used me next, for training. I said, “training?” Even non-humans need training..

So how do I verify all this? There would be an energy aura boost right away that I would perceive and be able to use. And this in fact did turn out to be true.

 

Exercise 9 First Retrieval Exercise.

[recreated from notes made with eyes closed during the exercise]

I somehow knew the guide I had attracted was male, though I didn’t have clear image of him. I thought his name was Charlie, or maybe Ernie. I saw an image of a black bench, placed near an inner door leading into a bar, or a restaurant, or a pub, somewhere in London. The bench was black and smooth (later it occurred to me that the black smoothness might be horsehair) covered with some kind of lacework, or crocheting, or something. Very colorful.

The handwork had been made by a woman in whose presence I was. Her name was – Angie? She looked to be in her 70s, wearing a black or dark dress, long. I knew that she had spent her life in that room, more or less. She was one of the proprietors.

I asked her if she knew that she was dead. “Oh yes,” she said, she knew. She was staying around because she was attached to that colorful cloth, which she had made. She had no family left. She had died peacefully and alone in her old age, in the ‘40s after the war. I got 1947. She knew she had died, but hadn’t gone on because she had no afterlife beliefs and so had nowhere to go. She said, under questioning, that she was okay with staying there, though she was getting bored, and missed her husband Charlie. She had lived with Charlie 50 years. At about the same time that I realized that guide Charlie was the same person as husband Charlie, she perceived him for the first time.

“Well, Charlie, I didn’t see you there!”

So was she ready to go on? “Yes – if it’s really Charlie.”

“How could I demonstrate it to you?”

“Well, I’m becoming persuaded that it’s possible by the questions you ask – and by the fact that you are here, too.”

Before they moved on, I wanted verification if possible. I asked her name, and got “Cooper Thestlewaite.” My doubter kicked in, thinking “Alice Cooper?” (I was misremembering the name I had gotten, Angie, as Alice.) In response, I got the name “Elize.”

Charlie had died in a bombing in 1941. He was a street warden and a collapsing wall fell on him. He was already in his “late years” — 50s or 60s, I gathered. And was Elize in her 70s? She said she had added to her age as she felt the years pass! So when had she died? In 1961, I think she said, or it might have been that she was 61 when she died. Neither of those conjectures square with her having lived with Charlie for 50 years!

I asked if she knew when is it now. She said, “Later.” [than when she died] “Don’t know when.” I asked for proof that I visited you? She said, “Tea Caddy, Stoke- on-Trent. China from pottery.” That didn’t sound very evidential. I asked again for proof, and she gave me what I took to be the name of their place, the “Meat Pie Inn, London.” When I asked Charlie, I got “: ___ Horse Inn, Lombard Street, Ealing, London.” (Is Ealing in London?)

I asked, “Can I help you?” and she said, “You have done, dearie.” I was moved to say, “Bless you my dear. Go ahead then, and I will follow.” They were going to the England of their youth, to an idealized version of the countryside, so that they could have a chance to live a long-held fantasy. They both know that they’re dead, they just want to play out the fantasy first I thought, “Well don’t you both look nice?” They had changed to be as they must have been in their early 30s, maybe. She is not pretty, but pleasant. He is slim, sharp featured, but kindly.

I told them to enjoy themselves, but remember, that they can go on when they want to. Charlie knows. The key somehow was the knitted thing she put on the black – horsehair?—bench and cared about. That’s why she stayed there rather than elsewhere

 

On July 18 and 19, 2005. a few months before I retired from Hampton Roads Publishing Company, we sponsored an “Exploring the Afterlife” workshop by Bruce Moen. He set out to teach, in two days, how to explore the afterlife, contact people who are deceased, and bring back verifiable details to demonstrate that the contact was not just fantasy. Big ambition! And he succeeded, as I’ll show. This report is an edited version of what I wrote up at the time.

We were a small group, probably all in our forties and above. We got comfortable with each other, mostly ate meals together, started joking and teasing, and it all helped. So did Bruce’s relaxed, informal delivery. He proceeded methodically, alternating between lecturing and guiding exercises. He is unhurried, not concerned lest his listeners may get impatient; his material is very well thought out. By the time we go to actually try connecting – it works. (The material and techniques Bruce uses in his workshops is all included in his Afterlife Knowledge Guidebook, which I edited and we published. I’m pretty sure that if you’re willing to practice, the method will work for you as it did for us, even without the advantage of group energy.

Monday July 18

“Trust is always the first issue,” Bruce says. The second key issue is remembering. He talks about state-specific memory and areas of consciousness.

Exercise 1 is Relaxation. Bruce discusses relaxation as a specific area of consciousness.

Exercise 2 is Energy Gathering From Below.

Exercise 3 Energy Gathering From Below again, adding cascades to increase the amount of energy. There is so much energy, I am nearly spacing out, and at the end I have an energy buzz.

Bruce talks about Affirmations and Placing Intent, reminding us to use clear, positive wording and present tense.

Exercise 4 is Placing Intent. Using the example of waiting for a red light to change to green. What Bruce calls his Silly Little Finger Bending Exercise, trying to detect that moment of intent just before something actually moves.

After lunch, he talks about the interpreter and the perceiver. He says he got so good at not talking to himself during exercises that he could feel when he was about to talk and could then not-do it. He talks about the interpreter finding the “nearest similar thing” and the language barrier. Perceiver to perceiver, and interpreter translates. Bruce says if you think you’re awake, imagine you are somewhere else (somewhere specific) and if you are there—you were in Focus 10! Deep relaxing breaths will help relax away too much thought.

Beliefs, Identity and Perception. “My beliefs define my identity.” Depression, disorientation, disassociation. “Don’t know who I am.” Might die, or should die soon. Belief system crash.

Exercise 5 Energy Gathering From Above. Whew! Strong energy and a lot of visuals, mostly forgotten. Half an inch from clicking out. Brought in energy from the top and bottom at the same time. To describe the gathering from above and below, I would describe a translucent shimmering sheath. Pulsed above and below alternately, and sometimes simultaneously. Tried swirling the energy in figure eights.

Exercise 6 Feeling Love. If you can’t remember when you were feeling love or loved, remember when you were doing something you loved doing.

Exercise 7 Projecting Love to specific individuals. I send to those who seem to be the ones who need it most. Sent twice to each. Feel full of energy, abuzz from too much, in fact.

“Heart Intelligence.” Ask a question, focus attention at top of breastbone more or less, and listen. Anything that happens may be an answer in some way. If you don’t immediately understand, say “I am willing to be receiving more.”

Tuesday July 19

Methods for Afterlife Exploration. “Afterlife” a misnomer; there’s just life. Same techniques can explore any reality. Other methods include dreaming, lucid dreaming, OBEs.

Bruce’s method of focused attention: Areas of consciousness, imagination v. fantasy, imagination as a means of perception. fantasy <– (grey area) –>  real.

Unexpected events? Play along.

Exercise 8 Priming the Pump. Remembering specific things from the past. Using non-physical senses

knowing <—> like reality

** Image quality does not correlate with the degree of reality of the image **

Areas of consciousness. Monroe-derived map: Focus 23, stuck and isolated; Focus 24-26, stuck with beliefs. (Group-held beliefs create non-physical realities.)  Focus 27, not stuck, in free association with others.

You can always ask the helpers to guide you to explore anything you want to explore.

[I am currently immersed in old journal notes and accounts of various stops on the road from where I started to where I am at the moment. I’m learning a lot, putting it together. This account of an interesting retrieval was published Sept. 1, 2005]

Friends,

This is long, but I did a couple of retrievals tonight that raised some interesting points, and I got an explanation, after the fact, that may be of use to you.

Tonight Rita Warren and I set out to do retrievals primarily focused on New Orleans and the tri-state area that was hit by the hurricane. Before we began, I set my intent to do something that would help lots of people rather than doing retrievals retail, so to speak.

1) Immediately I found myself on a major street in New Orleans, under this unbelievably bright, glaring light perhaps 12 feet above street level. It was so bright! As it was nighttime, the light was a huge attractor. Whatever else happened, I know I didn’t make up the light: it was there practically before I faded into the scene, if you know what I mean.

I was “dressed” so to speak as a smallish, thin black man, not young , in fact past his prime, with a scruffy white beard. Later I realized I was basically imitating Fred Sanford!

I started yelling at the three or four guys around me. Rough paraphrase, from memory:

“They’re not going to help us. They’re not going to do nothing! They don’t care if they leave us hear to rot. I tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to march down to the river [or it might have been, to the canal]. They got a big barge down there, and if enough of us go down there, they GOT to take us somewhere! They GOT to do something with us. But it’s got to be a whole lot of us go down there. One guy by himself, that’s nothing.”

Well, a few of the people – there were a lot more now, between the brilliant light and the shouting – a few of them said they’d go too. I said, more or less: “But we don’t go down there looking like a mob, or they liable to shoot us! We go down there marching four wide, like we was soldiers, and we bring our dead, and we bring the kids, and somebody needs help getting down there, we help ‘em.”

So we formed up, and by the time we were ready to go there were maybe 70 or 80 people in ranks of four, and I think at one point I told them to hold hands four across, for some reason or other that I made up. (Like the rest of you, I’m a great liar in these states.)

So then I started revving them up. “Where we goin’?” Mumble, mumble.

“We’re goin’ to the barge!” I shouted. “Where we goin’?”

“To the barge.”

“Where we going?” “TO THE BARGE.”

“All right, now there’s people hiding in all these buildings. We’re goin’ to shout loud enough to raise the dead, `Come on Out!’”. And we did, shouting “Come on Out! We’re goin’ to the barge!” etc. [I privately liked that touch, loud enough to raise the dead.]

After some indeterminate time, not very long, we got to the barge which of course our friends upstairs had there, as specified. They had a neat touch, army or national guard or something (uniformed) and Red Cross too, flanking the entry to the barge, giving out paper cups (I think) of water to people as they went by.

Of course, once they were in the barge, it was duck soup to get them to 27. When they came out on the other side (basically they walked into the barge at the stern and came out another hatch on the bow) they were mostly or maybe were all met by people they knew – but, odd thing – they didn’t all stay in 27. Immediately some sort of sank a couple of layers (that’s what it looked like to me) and wound up in this or that belief-system territory somewhere in 24-25-26. I saw at least one guy go to what looked like a black church.

I got, later, that they knew by then that they were dead, but they sort of readjusted their afterlife to what they wanted it to be / thought it ought to be.

Now, the next thing that happened was weird and was unprecedented at least in my experience. I went back to that light and thought I’d try it again. Worked pretty well the first time, why not mobilize some more people the same way? If it didn’t work, nothing would be lost, and maybe it would. But instead, somebody else – a helper, not someone in a body, though I couldn’t tell you how I knew that at the time – went and did the same thing I’d done. Did the rabble-rousing, formed them up, told them not to leave anybody behind, etc. I was pleased, of course, because it was happening without my even needing to do it, but perplexed isn’t the word for it.

Well, Rita and I got back to the present, swapped stories (hers was very straightforward; she’s had A LOT of practice!), and she suggested we try another.

2) Back to 27, this time winding up not at my place but on a hill overlooking the ocean, a place I’d never been. Expressed intent, and went on down to the hurricane disaster area.

At first I thought I was back in New Orleans, at one of the places where the levee broke. I knew there was a body in the water, so I went diving into the water (quite deep; ten feet, maybe?) and brought the body back to this (small!) barge that had helpers acting as assistants, like we were national guard or some other organized rescue force. First time I’ve ever handled a dead body in a retrieval, but the kid (it was a young black girl I think, but might have been white) thought she was dead and didn’t have any concept that you leave the body after you die, so she stayed with it. I wound up doing five retrievals in a row, all told, two on the lawn right in front of a detached house – I thought that was an odd place even as I was hauling them back – and two from the upper story of a two-story detached house. Went right through the wall with them, as anything that would break the spell would be worthwhile. The four after the girl were all young men, in their 20s maybe, or 30s, hard to say. White I think but am not quite sure. This is relevant for reasons that will appear shortly.

With each one, we went through the same routine. I told my “men” that the dead person “was in shock, probably thought they were going to die, maybe thought they had died. You’ve got to get them sitting up and breathing, and get them dry, or they’re going to die.” Etc. The usual bare-faced lies that ought to qualify me for a high government post.

Now the interesting thing here is that at about this time I realized we weren’t in New Orleans at all, we were on the Gulf Coast. (I thought Mississippi, but it could have been what they used to call the Florida Parishes – the parishes east of the city to the state line. More likely, it was all over the place on the shore. I’m not positive the upstairs crew cares much about state lines.) And at that time, the helpers who were playing enlisted men to my officer—they called me lieutenant (I was white this time, by the way) – started telling the men we’d rescued that we needed their help. Roughly: “You men know these folks; they’re your neighbors. We’ve got to get them out of here or they’re going to die. We know you’re exhausted and hungry, and we’re going to get you taken care of, but we need you to help us first.”

And so the helpers organized the retrievees – if that’s a word – to go retrieve others. And I’m thinking, “what the hell?” I mean, I’m used to being the last to get the word, but this is ridiculous.

So when I see I’m not needed, I go back to 27 and sit on my metal lawn chair looking out at the sea, waiting for someone to explain as promised. A helper appears, dressed in a General’s uniform. I look at the uniform and smile, and he smiles back, because of course he’s a general like I’m a lieutenant. He’s just quietly spoofing me.

Turns out he isn’t someone I know; isn’t one of my “other lives” I’m connected with; he’s just the guy in charge of that particular operation, I suppose. Or maybe, more likely, there’s some tie between us that he couldn’t be bothered to explain at the time.

Anyway, what had happened? Very interesting! He says that as usual they took advantage of my presence to get the attention of the dead people. But (perhaps because I had specified that I wanted to do more than just retrieve people one or two at a time?) they had then leveraged that. My presence allowed the dead people to recognize the helpers. That in itself stopped the tape-looping process (as I call it), freeing them from being hypnotized by their preconceptions. And the neat thing is, since they could now relate to the helpers, they could respond to a request to assist them to waken others. And since they were as dead as the ones they wanted to awaken, and had died in the same circumstances (that seemed to be important for some reason I don’t quite get) they could be heard by the dead in a way that the helpers could not – UNTIL the first set of dead helpers brought them to the attention of the newly dead, so to speak. (Sorry if that’s an involved sentence; best I can do at the moment.)

This all suggests that we can vastly leverage our efforts in common-disaster situations, so I thought I’d better make the effort to write it out so as to give you ideas. Sorry this is so long, I didn’t have time or energy enough to make it shorter.

 

 

Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. (EdgarCayce.org) sends out a Thought for the Day for those who wish. (It’s a free daily mailing from Cayce’s readings.) Today, as so many days, i see so close a similarity to the basic attitude and orientation that the guys have displayed, ever since I came into contact with them, that they might be ghost-writing each other. The way the guys would put this would be something like, “You don’t need to change who you are. You need change only which parts of yourself you express. You lay down some threads and pick up others.”

From Edgar Cayce reading 911-3:

“(Q) How can I be less sensitive and more adaptable?

“(A) Just be that way! That is, as this: Do not worry self over the fact, or conditions that have so long existed where the body-physical and mental has depended upon outside influences for the abilities of activity.”

Cayce’s admonitions were always meant to encourage, to empower, to clarify one’s situation. Wonderful man.

[Good and evil still exist, but they are no longer so self-evident.] We have to realize that each represents a judgment. [But we must make ethical decisions.] Moral judgment is always present and carries with it characteristic psychological consequences…. [A]s in the past, so in the future the wrong we have done, thought, or intended will wreak its vengeance on our souls. [But when we realize that the basis for the judgment is uncertain, ethical decision becomes a subjective, creative act.] [T]here must be a spontaneous and decisive impulse on the part of the unconscious. [Sometimes people are involved in a conflict of choices.]

As a rule, however, the individual is so unconscious that he altogether fails to see his own potentialities for decision. Instead he is constantly and anxiously looking around for eternal rules and regulations which can guide him in his perplexity. [This is largely be blamed on education, which preaches unlivable ideals and never touches the question of private experience.]

Therefore the individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost, of self-knowledge, that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish — as he ought — to live without self-deception or self-delusion.

In general, however, most people are hopelessly ill-equipped for living on this level, [though some can]. Such self-knowledge is of prime importance, because through it we approach that fundamental stratum or core of human nature where the instincts dwell. Here are those pre-existent dynamic factors which ultimately govern the ethical decisions of our consciousness. This core is the unconscious and its contents, concerning which we cannot pass any final judgment. Our ideas about it are bound to be inadequate, for we are unable to comprehend its essence cognitively and set rational limits to it. We achieve knowledge of nature only through science, which enlarges consciousness; hence deepened self-knowledge also require science, that is, psychology. No one builds a telescope or microscope with one turn of the wrist, out of goodwill alone, without knowledge of optics.

C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp 330-331

.2.

Jung’s Contribution to Our Time, by Eleanor Bertine, begins by stating that Jung found a way for each of us to find the central principle — a fixed point — to allow us to relate everything else in our life to. Today is a time of relativity to other relative things, Bertine says, but this is because it is an age in decay.  Artists lead the way to perception, as usual: artists from the turn of the century were expressing their horror at the end of their internal order and certainty. The perception of disorder spread. Panic and nihilism bred more disorder and disorientation. Yeats said it long ago, with the clear and pitiless intensity of the perception of a true artist and an honest man. Our hope, in these lost times?

“The relatively few who will use the key [Jung’s key to the unconscious] will so gain in the weight and authoritativeness of personality which comes from being all-of-a-peace that they may become the grain of mustard-seed or the leaven which leavens the whole lump.” Jung’s Contribution to Our Time, by Eleanor Bertine, Page 29

“One generation, like our own, lives in a time of the degeneration of a form of civilization, when it is hard for the individual not to lose his way and fall into unmitigated evil. But if mankind does not destroy itself outright, another generation will rise to be fired with a new hope…. The new hope will flourish only to fail, [because the new people will forget our hard-earned lessons] and another time of breakup will inevitably sweep away that moment of security. However, whatever phase of collective culture may prevail, the individual may always use his own experience in it as a basis for the realization of the Self. Indeed, it is only by separating to some extent from the collective cycles of change and seeking the one sure center inside, rather than outside, that the individual can transcend his time and achieve stability.” page 29

.3.

Jung came to five basic conclusions on the religious side of the psyche:

1 — a spiritual element is an organic part of the human psyche.

2 — such elements are regularly expressed in symbols.

3 — these symbols reveal a path of psychological development which can be traced backwards toward a past cause and forward toward a future goal.

4 — this goal is expressed by images of completion in a whole Self which is unique for each individual, formed by integration of the ego and unconscious.

5 — this whole is characterized by all the qualities of numinousness, unconditional authority, and value which also belonged to the image of God.

Jung, Psychology and Religion