FINDING ONE'S WAY....August 4, 2024
At age 38 in 1913, Carl Gustav Jung* was a successful world-renowned Switzerland psychiatrist and university researcher/professor. Sigmund Freud, already credited with scientifically proving the reality of the Unconscious, which unknowingly is working in our words and behaviors, had named Jung heir to carry on his work.
But at this juncture Jung realized that his view of the Unconscious was much broader and potentially more promising than Freud's. He, partly consciously and partly unconsciously, forced a permanent separation of the two men.
This resulted in Jung finding himself in a no-man's land without patterns or guidelines to follow for his personal and professional life. This has, and undoubtedly will, happen to others. It must, at the time, be an experience of stumbling into a meaningless abyss amid one's orderly life.
He knew he must go his own way however lonely and separated. He resigned from his prestigious positions while continuing to see his patients. He would seek answers for the questions his abyss experience had assigned to him. He knew now he would search within himself, his natural dreams and focused fantasies, as well as outer resources which came and seemed relevant to his fatefully assigned task.
As long as a person's life continues the well-worn and socially acceptable paths of family and religious/cultural expectations, one avoids the situation described above. And life with its normal troubles, ups and downs goes in rather typical and generally expected ways to its physical end.
This collective type of path usually provides an adult with some reasonable sense of meaning, purpose and hope in life. Thus, one does not experience the more extreme trauma of a more individually unique and dangerous journey. This would be in the long run, I suspect Jung would agree, a fuller experience of both a person's human and divine nature.
Such an unexpected turn in life can be understood more hopefully as a person 'falling' into their genuine human uniqueness. And being significantly torn away from the general collective, more comfortable and predictable patterns of life. It can be a time of severe meaninglessness and hopelessness for an individual. A person could live only so long in that state without tragically losing their healthy mind.
There are many examples of other persons having similar experiences. Some have found themselves making needed and noble contributions to humanity. We may become aware of such persons in our education but may know little about how they found their way out of the life-threatening personal abyss.
So, it may still be uncommon knowledge to describe how such persons stumbled onto a 'path less traveled' and of the costs and ecstasies they then encountered. Ones which only indirectly led to their much-needed contributions to culture.
With no examples in his early 19th century culture to guide him, how did Jung find his way into a creative meaning for his personal existence and a unique sense of a purpose for his life?
A primary path out of his abyss was stumbling onto some previous historical examples of persons and communities which had recorded similar inner experiences and images which Jung was having. Inner experiences of the Collective Unconscious he was faithfully recording along with some from his modern patients.
Two important resources which arrived to him were writings from the ancient Christian communities of Alchemists, mystics and Gnostics. Another was an ancient Chinese document titled The Secret Of the Golden Flower. As he saw connections between himself and these ancient writings, he enthusiastically plunged into a laborious study of them for what his contemporaries would have seen as mostly non-sense.
But to Jung they became ever-more-clear answers to questions which his personal 'fall into the abyss' of the Unconscious had posed to him.
All this mushrooming discovery over four plus decades was very much anchored in what had previously been to him and his culture, and I suspect to Sigmund Freud, Unconscious.
He found this to be a living stream of material which potentially lies within reach of every human being. It could result in great leaps in the psychological and spiritual evolution of individuals and of our species. It might foster the arrival of a desperately needed transformation of human values for emerging times. And it could lead to important strides in understanding and compassion among humans worldwide. This, in turn, may curtail our present collective path toward destruction of ourselves and our Earth home.
A reason I'm moved to write this is that some of our human peers may 'fall' into the abyss of their own human/divine uniqueness. They may find Jung's path, and the ideas and processes he rediscovered, a rich resource. This might help some escape despair and bring back to culture much-needed treasures. Treasures from the cosmic expanse of the Collective Unconscious, which connects us all, for the creative evolution of a safer and higher quality of human life on earth.
*
Historical references are accurate to my best knowledge.
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