Wholeness

felix_dakat · May 10, 2020, 1:29am

I don’t think Fixed Cross was advising you to bow out. One person’s gobbledygook is another’s phenomenological experience. It’s not meaningless to the experiencer. From the standpoint of the inquirer, it’s a matter of finding out what others mean.

felix_dakat · May 10, 2020, 11:32pm

Here’s a footnote to Jung’s Red Book by Jung scholar Sonu Shamdasani. It’s about the literary history of divine madness. I figure if anyone is still following this thread at this point, they might be interested in this subject. Already acquainted with it through portals 1, 2, and 3, I discovered a rich vein of divine madness about a year-and-a-half ago through portal number 4.

89.The theme of divine madness has a long history. Its locus classicus was Socrates’s discussion of it in the Phaedrus: madness, “provided it comes as a gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings” (Plato, Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII, tr. W. Hamilton [London: Penguin, 1986], p. 46, line 244).

Socrates distinguished four types of divine madness: (1) inspired divination, such as by the prophetess at Delphi; (2) instances in which individuals, when ancient sins have given rise to troubles, have prophesied and incited to prayer and worship; (3) possession by the Muses, since the technically skilled untouched by the madness of the Muses will never be a good poet; and (4) the lover.

In the Renaissance, the theme of divine madness was taken up by the Neoplatonists such as Ficino and by humanists such as Erasmus. Erasmus’s discussion is particularly important, as it fuses the classical Platonic conception with Christianity. For Erasmus, Christianity was the highest type of inspired madness. Like Plato, Erasmus differentiated between two types of madness: “Thus as long as the soul uses its bodily organs aright, a man is called sane; but truly, when it bursts its chains and tries to be free, practising running away from its prison, then one calls it insanity. If this happens through disease or a defect of the organs, then by common consent it is, plainly, insanity. And yet men of this kind, too, we find foretelling things to come, knowing tongues and writings which they had never studied beforehand—altogether showing forth something divine” (In Praise of Folly, tr. M. A. Screech [London: Penguin, 1988], pp. 128–29). He adds that if insanity “happens through divine fervor, it may not be the same kind of insanity, but it is so like it that most people make no distinction.” For lay people, the two forms of insanity appeared the same. The happiness that Christians sought was “nothing other than a certain kind of madness.” Those who experience this “experience something which is very like madness. They speak incoherently and unnaturally, utter sound without sense, and their faces suddenly change expression . . . in fact they are truly beside themselves” (ibid., pp. 129–33).

In 1815, the philosopher F.W.J. Schelling discussed divine madness in a manner that has a certain proximity to Jung’s discussion, noting that “The ancients did not speak in vain of a divine and holy madness.” Schelling related this to the “inner self-laceration of nature.” He held that “nothing great can be accomplished without a constant solicitation of madness, which should always be overcome, but should never be entirely lacking.” On the one hand, there were sober spirits in whom there was no trace of madness, together with men of understanding who produced cold intellectual works. On the other, “there is one kind of person that governs madness and precisely in this overwhelming shows the highest force of the intellect. The other kind of person is governed by madness and is someone who is really mad” (The Ages of the World, tr. J. Wirth [Albany: SUNY Press, 2000], pp. 102–4).

C. G. Jung. The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon) (Kindle Locations 3963-3985). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

The principle use of divine madness as described above, is to produce powerful conscious psychic images. Unless there is a modicum of “madness” these images may be repressed by the ego defenses. Typically, as we see often in philosophical dialogue, they are covered over, obfuscated by abstract language. What passes for reason is too often rationalization, intellectualization which disguises motivation. Language may veil the images that would reveal the deep Self. It’s a challenge to turn it around.

felix_dakat · May 11, 2020, 3:48pm

Balance is the key to wholeness.

Bob · May 12, 2020, 2:33pm

“Each of us is a Spark related to our Source through a thread of light. It is part of the Spark which eventually will be the path through which the Spark will travel back to its Source. That is why we are told that man is the path itself. The Spark has different names on its path of development. For example, when it is really captured in the physical body and totally identified with it, we call it the “sleeping spark,” or the reflection. When it awakens and wants to be aware of its powers and destination, we call it the “pilgrim.” When it arrives on the mental plane and has highly organized the three bodies we call it a “personality.” When it further advances and harmonizes all its activities in the light of the Inner Guide, we call it the unfolding human soul. When it releases the Solar Angel and stands on its own, we call it a Soul or an Arhat. When it advances to higher realms, we call it the Spiritual Triad, then the Self or the Monad or the Divine Spark.”
Torkom Saraydarian, Dynamics of the Soul
When this “spark” travels its path, a human being is manifested. Does this make sense to anyone?

Bob · May 12, 2020, 2:45pm

This seems to make sense to me, and at the time when I was steeped in Christianity, I did appear quite mad to many people. Today I have noticed that I have sought safety on solid ground, but I have forfeited something profound by doing that. I dared to believe Christ and proposed to all and sundry that the time is ripe to “just do it.” Where I slipped was where had underestimated my own strength and resoluteness.

felix_dakat · May 12, 2020, 3:22pm

Bob:

For Erasmus, Christianity was the highest type of inspired madness. Like Plato, Erasmus differentiated between two types of madness: “Thus as long as the soul uses its bodily organs aright, a man is called sane; but truly, when it bursts its chains and tries to be free, practising running away from its prison, then one calls it insanity. If this happens through disease or a defect of the organs, then by common consent it is, plainly, insanity. And yet men of this kind, too, we find foretelling things to come, knowing tongues and writings which they had never studied beforehand—altogether showing forth something divine” (In Praise of Folly, tr. M. A. Screech [London: Penguin, 1988], pp. 128–29).

This seems to make sense to me, and at the time when I was steeped in Christianity, I did appear quite mad to many people. Today I have noticed that I have sought safety on solid ground, but I have forfeited something profound by doing that. I dared to believe Christ and proposed to all and sundry that the time is ripe to “just do it.” Where I slipped was where had underestimated my own strength and resoluteness.

So-called “divine madness” seems to be related to if not synonymous with what Tillich describes as “ecstasy”:

“Ecstasy” (“standing outside one’s self”) points to a state of mind which is extraordinary in the sense that the mind transcends its ordinary situation. Ecstasy is not a negation of reason; it is the state of mind in which reason is beyond itself, that is, beyond its subject-object structure. In being beyond itself reason does not deny itself. “Ecstatic reason” remains reason; it does not receive anything irrational or antirational—which it could not do without self-destruction—but it transcends the basic condition of finite rationality, the subject-object structure. This is the state mystics try to reach by ascetic and meditative activities. But mystics know that these activities are only preparations and that the experience of ecstasy is due exclusively to the manifestation of the mystery in a revelatory situation. Ecstasy occurs only if the mind is grasped by the mystery, namely, by the ground of being and meaning. And, conversely, there is no revelation without ecstasy. At best there is information which can be tested scientifically. The “prophet’s ecstasy,” of which the hymn sings and of which the prophetic literature is full, indicates that the experience of ecstasy has universal significance.

Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology, Volume 1 (pp. 111-112). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

felix_dakat · May 15, 2020, 4:26pm

Wholeness corresponds to what Jaspers refers to as the Encompassing:

For us, being remains open. On all sides it draws us into the unlimited. Over and over again it is always causing some new determinate being to confront us. Such is the course of our progressing knowledge. By reflecting upon that course we ask about being itself, which always seems to recede from us, in the very manifestation of all the appearances we encounter. This being we call the encompassing. But the encompassing is not the horizon of our knowledge at any particular moment. Rather, it is the source from which all new horizons emerge, without itself ever being visible even as a horizon. The encompassing always merely announces itself— in present objects and within the horizons—but it never becomes an object. Never appearing to us itself, it is that wherein everything else appears. It is also that due to which all things not merely are what they immediately seem to be, but remain transparent.

Jaspers, Karl. Philosophy of Existence (Works in Continental Philosophy) (pp. 17-18). University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc… Kindle Edition.

Aware-ness · May 17, 2020, 3:50pm

[Believe me:23 It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path, therefore I fol. i(v)/ii(r) cannot teach you.24 The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.
Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves.25
The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us.26 Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you?
Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that?
There is only one way and that is your way.27
You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you.
May each go his own way.
I will be no savior, no lawgiver, no master teacher unto you. You are no longer little children.28
Giving laws, bettering, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way. The way leads to mutual love in community. Men will come to see and feel the similarity and commonality of their ways.
Laws and teachings held in common compel people to solitude, so that they may escape the pressure of undesirable contact, but solitude makes people hostile and venomous.
~~ Jung, C. G… The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon) (p. 125). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

felix_dakat · May 17, 2020, 4:38pm

Aware-ness:

[Believe me:23 It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path, therefore I fol. i(v)/ii(r) cannot teach you.24 The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.
Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves.25
The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us.26 Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you?
Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that?
There is only one way and that is your way.27
You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you.
May each go his own way.
I will be no savior, no lawgiver, no master teacher unto you. You are no longer little children.28
Giving laws, bettering, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way. The way leads to mutual love in community. Men will come to see and feel the similarity and commonality of their ways.
Laws and teachings held in common compel people to solitude, so that they may escape the pressure of undesirable contact, but solitude makes people hostile and venomous.
~~ Jung, C. G… The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon) (p. 125). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Not surprisingly, the way of individuation is individual. The first lesson I get from Jung is to pay attention to the imagery of my own mind whereas the spirit of the age directs our attention toward anything and everything else. One’s mental imagery is the key to one’s own soul.

Aware-ness · May 19, 2020, 1:18am

felix dakat:

Aware-ness:

[Believe me:23 It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path, therefore I fol. i(v)/ii(r) cannot teach you.24 The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.
Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves.25
The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us.26 Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you?
Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that?
There is only one way and that is your way.27
You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you.
May each go his own way.
I will be no savior, no lawgiver, no master teacher unto you. You are no longer little children.28
Giving laws, bettering, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way. The way leads to mutual love in community. Men will come to see and feel the similarity and commonality of their ways.
Laws and teachings held in common compel people to solitude, so that they may escape the pressure of undesirable contact, but solitude makes people hostile and venomous.
~~ Jung, C. G… The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon) (p. 125). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Not surprisingly, the way of individuation is individual. The first lesson I get from Jung is to pay attention to the imagery of my own mind whereas the spirit of the age directs our attention toward anything and everything else. One’s mental imagery is the key to one’s own soul.

Pertinent to today is “solitude makes people hostile and venomous.” We see that with the anti-lock-downers. We can clearly see the results of solitude, and quarantine fatigue.

felix_dakat · May 19, 2020, 5:05pm

The voices in our heads tend to get louder when we are isolated. By practicing compassion toward our self and others during this time, we can get in touch with what’s good about ourselves.

felix_dakat · May 20, 2020, 11:03pm

According to Jung, Christ is the still living myth of our culture who regardless of his historical existence embodies the myths of a divine primordial man the mystic Adam. Christ occupies the center of the Christian mandala, a symbol of wholeness.
Christ is in us and we in him. Christ exemplifies the archetype of the self. The Antichrist, then, corresponds to the shadow of the self–the dark half of the human totality.

felix_dakat · May 21, 2020, 2:12am

In response to this, one commentator said “Jesus is at the right hand of God not at the center”, to which I replied “God is omnipresent so the right hand of God is everywhere.”

felix_dakat · May 21, 2020, 3:13am

archive.org/stream/collectedwor … u_djvu.txt

Now just as the Anthropos Quaternio finds its symmetrical
complement in the lower Adam, so the lower Adam is balanced
by the subordinate Shadow Quaternio, constructed after the
pattern of the upper one. The symmetrical complement of the
lower Adam is the serpent. The choice of this symbol is justified
firstly by the well-known association of Adam with the snake:
it is his chthonic daemon, his familiar spirit. Secondly, the snake
is the commonest symbol for the dark, chthonic world of in-
stinct. It may— as frequently happens— be replaced by an equiv-
alent cold-blooded animal, such as a dragon, crocodile, or fish.

But the snake is not just a nefarious, chthonic being; it is also,
as we have already mentioned, a symbol of wisdom, and hence
of light, goodness, and healing. Even in the New Testament
it is simultaneously an allegory of Christ and of the devil, just
as we have seen that the fish was. Similarly the dragon, which
for us has only a negative meaning, has a positive significance
in China, and sometimes in Western alchemy too. The inner
polarity of the snake-symbol far exceeds that of man. It is overt,
whereas man’s is partly latent or potential. The serpent sur-
passes Adam in cleverness and knowledge and can outwit him.
She is older than he, and is evidently equipped by God with a
superhuman intelligence, like that son of God who took over
the role of Satan.

Just as man culminates above in the idea of a “light” and
good God, so he rests below on a dark and evil principle, tradi-
tionally described as the devil or as the serpent that personifies
Adam’s disobedience. And just as we symmetrized man by the
serpent, so the serpent has its complement in the second Naas-
sene quaternio, or Paradise Quaternio. Paradise takes us into
the world of plants and animals. It is, in fact, a plantation or
garden enlivened by animals, the epitome of all the growing
things that sprout out of the earth. As serpens raercurialis, the
snake is not only related to the god of revelation, Hermes, but,
as a vegetation numen, calls forth the “blessed greenness,” all
the budding and blossoming of plant life. Indeed, this serpent
actually dwells in the interior of the earth and is the pneuma
that lies hidden in the stone.

The symmetrical complement of the serpent, then, is the
stone as representative of the earth. Here we enter a later de-
velopmental stage of the symbolism, the alchemical stage, whose
central idea is the lapis. Just as the serpent forms the lower
opposite of man, so the lapis complements the serpent. It corre-
sponds, on the other hand, to man, for it is not only represented
in human form but even has “body, soul, and spirit,” is an
homunculus and, as the texts show, a symbol of the self. It is,
however, not a human ego but a collective entity, a collective
soul, like the Indian hiranyagarbha, ‘golden seed.’ The stone is
the “father-mother” of the metals, an hermaphrodite. Though
it is an ultimate unity, it is not an elementary but a composite
unity that has evolved. For the stone we could substitute all
those “thousand names” which the alchemists devised for their
central symbol, but nothing different or more fitting would have
been said.

This choice of symbol, too, is not arbitrary, but is docu-
mented by alchemical literature from the first to the eighteenth
century. The lapis is produced, as we have already seen, from
the splitting and putting together of the four elements, from
the rotundum. The rotundum is a highly abstract, transcendent
idea, which by reason of its roundness and wholeness refers to
the Original Man, the Anthropos.

Accordingly our four double pyramids would arrange them-
selves in a circle and form the well-known uroboros. As the
fifth stage, the rotundum would then be identical with the first;
that is to say, the heavy darkness of the earth, metal, has a secret
relationship to the Anthropos. That is obvious in alchemy, but
occurs also in the history of religion, where the metals grow
from Gayomart’s blood. This curious relationship is explained
by the identity of the lowest, most material thing with the high-
est and most spiritual, which we have already met in the inter-
pretation of the serpent as a chthonic and at the same time the
“most spiritual” animal. In Plato the rotundum is the world-
soul and a “blessed God.”

stottilien.com/2013/01/15/c-g-j … r-abraxas/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katabasis

The trip to the underworld is a mytheme of comparative mythology found in a diverse number of religions from around the world. The hero or upper-world deity journeys to the underworld or to the land of the dead and returns, often with a quest-object or a loved one, or with heightened knowledge. The ability to enter the realm of the dead while still alive, and to return, is a proof of the classical hero’s exceptional status as more than mortal. A deity who returns from the underworld demonstrates eschatological themes such as the cyclical nature of time and existence, or the defeat of death and the possibility of immortality. [Wikipedia]
Mythological characters who make visits to the underworld include[edit]

The return of Persephone, by Frederic Leighton (1891)
Mesopotamian mythology
Enkidu, in the Sumerian text Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld and in the final tablet of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh
Inanna/Ishtar, in an attempt to overthrow her sister, Ereshkigal, queen of the netherworld
Dumuzid/Tammuz is cast into the netherworld as a substitute for his consort Inanna/Ishtar
Geshtinanna volunteers to spend half the year in the netherworld as a substitute for her brother Dumuzid
Nergal, to make amends for disrespecting Ereshkigal
Ancient Egyptian mythology
Osiris (see also Book of the Dead)
The Magician Meryre in Papyrus Vandier (Posener, 1985)
Greek mythology and Roman mythology
Adonis is mourned and then recovered by his consort Aphrodite
The god Dionysus, to rescue Semele from Hades,[40] and again in his role as patron of the theater
Heracles during his 12th labor, on which occasion he also rescued Theseus
Heracles, to rescue Alcestis from Hades
Hermes, to rescue Persephone from Hades
Orpheus, to rescue Eurydice from Hades
Persephone and Demeter
Psyche
Odysseus
Aeneas, to speak to his father in the Aeneid
Theseus and Pirithous try to abduct Persephone; they fail, and only Theseus is rescued by Heracles

Devadatta pulled into Avici after various transgressions against the Buddha
Christianity
Jesus, during the Harrowing of Hell
Jesus in the Pistis Sophia
Norse religion and Finnish mythology
Odin
Baldr
Hermóðr
Helreið Brynhildar
Lemminkäinen’s rescue from Tuonela by his mother
Welsh mythology

Angel showing Hell to Yudhisthira
Pwyll’s descent into Annwn in the Welsh Mabinogion
Preiddeu Annwfn, King Arthur’s expedition to Annwfn as recounted in the Book of Taliesin
Buddhism
Avalokiteśvara’s descent into a Hell-like region after taking on the bad karma of her executioner in pity
Kṣitigarbha
Phra Malai, a monk who travels to Hell to teach its denizens
Several episodes of people, including Devadatta, who are dragged alive into hell after committing misdeeds against the Buddha
Other
Japanese mythology: Izanagi and Izanami in Yomi
Maya mythology: the Maya Hero Twins
Vedic religion: Ushas (dawn) is liberated from the Vala by Indra
Hinduism: Emperor Yudhishthira descends into Naraka
Ohlone mythology (Native American): Kaknu fights Body of Stone
Yoruba religion: Obatala, the dying-and-rising god of Ifẹ̀, the Yoruba cultural centre
Religion of the Mongols: King Gesar launches an invasion into the realm of Erlik to save soul of his mother
In Wicca and several neo-Pagan faiths, there is a story of how the Goddess descends into the Underworld to learn the mystery of death. [Wikipedia]

Aware-ness · May 21, 2020, 5:55pm

Methinks you’re speaking of whole people. Those not whole, go crazy over seclusion, don military garb, assault rifles and more, and storm state capitals to stop the lockdowns.

Aware-ness · May 21, 2020, 6:02pm

Better the right hand. The left hand back then was used to wipe with. Who would want to sit on the stinky side of God?

BTW … that’s why we shake with the right hand.

felix_dakat · May 21, 2020, 7:42pm

It seems you wish to focus only on the dark side of the circle. Why do you suppose that is?

Aware-ness · May 22, 2020, 6:19pm

Because I’m paying attention. Are your suggesting something else? Lay some Jung on me.

felix_dakat · May 22, 2020, 6:27pm

If that were all that is going on I suppose that would be an adequate answer. But it isn’t. What we pay attention to is determined by our interests. Why among the infinite number of things you could focus on, are you focused on some demonstrators at the state capitol who are protesting against stay-at-home orders?

Aware-ness · May 23, 2020, 5:09am

I understand. You are right. I’m a news hound. So I see that there are hundreds, if not thousands, millions, possibly billions, of examples of people following their darker natures and instincts : not just the anti-lock-downers. And Covid is bringing them to the surface. Jung pointed it out. “Solitude makes people hostile and venomous.” As a result of home isolation – otherwise, solitude – people are going Coronavirus crazy.

And isn’t that the point, or intention, of this thread? The development of wholeness, to address our higher and better natures and instincts?

“the threat to one’s inmost self from dragons and serpents points to the danger of the newly acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive soul, the unconscious” (“On the psychology of the child archetype,” CW 9,1, §282).
~~ Jung, C. G… The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon) (p. 204). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.