Matt, I am so so sorry for your loss - I have so much compassion for how utterly devastating it can be to lose a companion, especially out of the blue:( Although this is the first time I’ve commented, I’ve insatiably followed you/your conversations here for quite some time, and attended the *amazing* Iain McGilchrist conference in SF in March (Bravo btw!) - and feel compelled within the first minute of this video to (finally) express my immense gratitude & appreciation for you and all that you share with the world. Thank you endlessly. Sending support & blessings🐾🙏
Matthew, I am very sorry about your dog. Condolences. I have had many animals and still do, each loss I am with them as they pass. A beautiful space you are sitting in, Mathew. Full of light and warmth of life. I have listened to this conversation twice and I thank you both. 🙏❤️🌍🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵
Hey guys, Matthew, I'm sorry for the loss of your dog. I really felt the sentiment in "less death of god, more death of dog", and appreciated the sense in which reading Answer to Job was theraputic for you. I think it is a characteristic sense of Jung's intetional ideas, in that, he is not merely delineating the antecedants and etiology of a condition, but also implicitly suggests the moral imperative of following up the realisations incurred by the reflection upon the condition. In the special case of Answer to Job, I feel, the imperative is to reconcile the tear or rift within the personality. A rift which on the one hand confounds it into a projection of its characteristic condition unto the physical world, and on the other hand, unto a psychical world, both of which seem ever fleeting from our limited grasp. To reconcile the two worlds within the personality will account for its individuation. Great interior design, by the way, Matthew ;). Tim, as a side note, I really enjoy your digressions, especially as you admit an awareness of them. I find them to be really stimulating when I can track the associated threads you are weaving in them. In any case, I think the reason I enjoy your conversational dynamic guys is because you balance each other for me as a listener who is also a dissociated participant. There was alot in this conversation. Around 05:00, Tim, you've refered to Edinger's view of Job's situation as an encounter with the Self, which I think is only relatively true, insofar as the entire situation is characteristic of the psychological drama embedded within the fragmented individuation process. As Jung puts in (I read it in hebrew so I will paraphrase), and Matthew, you've quoted this in the previous dialogue, "That which exists in the celestial medium as an eternal 'process', appears in time as an a-periodical sequence, that is, it repeats itself frequently in disparate intervals". This statement is made clearer further in the page where Jung states that when these mythic figurations of behaviour, or subjective activity, appear in a modern context, they are not to be understood as personal occurence, but fragments of the eternal process which takes place in the celestial medium, and which was split by particular and temporal events. It is in that way which I think Jung suggests we conceive of the Self, that is, not itself as a hypostasised factor, but as that which is inferred from the total process comprised by seemingly distinct hypostasised factors, which he goes on to explicate as the quaternity of factors which constitute the Imago Dei, or most essentially, the Self. I think this weaves neatly with the remark you've made, Matthew, around 16:30, about Jung's mention of the Buddha in the context of the ubiquitous efficacy of the pleromatic archetypal process prevalent at the time. Earlier in page 76, Jung says something which for me was quite shocking, as he is explicitly stating that the archetype may (may, I presume, standing for the empirical taxation as a caveat) not only manifest psychicaly, but "objectively", that is, external to the person. He again avoids "physically", but it is clear enough if his conceptual system is taken into account. Which is to say, the archetype can manifest in physis synchronistically, that is, as seemingly separate instances. Now, evidently, when discussing the manifestation of the archetype of the Self, or the Image of Totality, a relative degree of consciousness is already presupposed, as we are refering the locus of manifestation to personal subjects, whether it be Jesus or Buddha. The problem, however, which I think Jung acknowledges, and the solution of which Erich Neumann puts beautifully, is that the archetype is always approximately articulated, never transcarnated, that is, as in the imaginery case whereby the archetype transposes its locus of efficacy from the formal to the actual. In effect, it means that Christ, if we are to take him as a manifestation of the Self, is not qualified by his "completeness", rather, by his one sided "perfection". A problem which Jung takes to bear with rigor in this book. Erich Neumann captures the moral problem inherent in this situation beautifully, and I paraphrase: "One must come to sacrifice perfection on the altar of completeness". The ubiquitous efficacy of the archetype seems to finds its expression laterally, but with unique relation to the impetus of the specific "region of psyche" characteristic of a given collective. Jung is easily misunderstood thus as a plural essentialist, but what I suspect he is getting at is that by a factor of momentum the species drifts and splits into separate collectives which are then characterised by the psychical region in the context of which they inhere. I think a good analogy is the way in which an organism relatively similar to us may hypothetically evolve on a different planet, but will still require the particular ecological conditions of his nativity to thrive. Though I carried away to cosmic analogies, same analogy can be drawn on earth, where different life forms require different habitats. Can they adapt? Maybe, but over the substanial and exacting course of time. Maybe this is a fair analogy.. Around 30:00, Tim, I thought your discussion here was inspired and cogent. I espeically appreciated your description of the canalizing function and the notion of Katabasis. The dissolution of the Ego, or the canalizing function, within the unconscious, is not a permanent state, as implied by the poorly defined notion of "Ego Death", and although the Ego seems to habour a secret and persistent "death wish" to dissolve within the pleromatic unity of the unconscious, it must always retain its boundaries. In the dramatic image of Katabasis, the Ego makes a journey into the underworld, seemingly dissolves, but it must reconsistute itself in order to retain any measure of development. This seems to be a continious process of partial dissolution and reconstituion, otherwise the Ego would be entirely swallowed in the unconscious, thus marking the devolution of what might be the most complex achievement of evolution, insofar as I presume it to be a psychophysical complex. Matthew, you've referred to Ahriman and Lucifer in both dialogues, which I do find interesting, yet still somewhat vague. Steiner, from my understanding of him, is more of a trinitarian. He finds trinities everywhere, even in a social order, or the functions of the personality in Thinking, Feeling and Willing. To him, as I understand it, Christ stands between the polar opposites, Ahriman and Lucifer, which at the same time, are the polar forces which threat to tear every person asunder. While he observes, similar to Jung, a collective process which is endemic to the Christ figure only, he sees in these forces a partial reality which Jung tries to subvert constantly, as he endavours to explicate the way in which the two are a four, and the three is made complete by a four. As an aside, there was a sentence in the book which I found to be utterly preplexing, yet possibly the best articulation of the problem. He says that people can circumvent, or more accurately, reconcile these critical conflicts which occure due to the splitting, only if they can get used to seeing in the number 5 an event number. What a preplexing statement.. Though, I supsect its genius is implied by the fact that the quaternity is still not the Self, but the total image of the Self. The ultimate archetype so to speak. That which qualifies all other archetypes, or that of which all archetypes are but a localised and fragmented part. In Aion Jung elaborates on the two beasts of creation- Behemoth and Leviathan. He regards one as the beast of the depth, and the other as the beast of the heavens. This view correlates to the view of the two sons of God. One being the devil and the other christ. But in that sense, Yehova is not different from that beast of the heavens or of the depths because he is an antinomy, as Jung puts it. Jesus Christ is but a sublimated figuration of a previously ambivalent God. Thus, Yehova is not The God insofar as he is constantly torn asunder when manifested in creation relative to his subjects, the israelites, and mankind in general. I think this is the key to understanding his idea of the quaternion and the role of the Holy Spirit, Sophia, as she was introduced into the dogma in the form of Marry. Yehova in the book of Job was unconscious of his shadow, Satan, and thus projected unto Job a figure which both devalued Job of his objective nature, as Yehova seems to be interacting with an apsect of himself in a projected form, and coincidentaly eleaveted Job to the pedestal of a being which is on par with Himself. I also really appreciated the way in which you, Tim, have differentiated between the "unconscious" and the "unconscious content". The later being an instance within a medium, and the previous being the medium itself. The reconciliation of contents respective of the medium, that is, unconscious and conscious, are expressed in personal symbols indicative of a specific individuation of an egoic situation. Whereas the reconcilation of the mediums themselves, is expressed in symbols of totality, which are collective and impersonal insofar as they are categorical. A bit of a ramble but I really enjoy your conversations and how it enriches me. Thank you! Yotam
Thanks so much for these deep reflections, Yotam! Much to think about. I really value your close engagement with the texts and with our dialogue. Thanks also for forgiving (and even blessing) my digressions - It's my disposition to digress!
Oh no !!!! Dog put to sleep !! ??? 🐶😢🐶😭would that be Ainsley ? The one who was turning up in that cute short clips u posted a while back. r.i.p. to ur pet condolences Excellent dialogue Matt ! Would love to hear from Becca in these Jung dialogues, make it a tri-alogue, her lectures on jungs red books and Tolkien were absolutely fascinating!!!! Keep up the great work dr. Segall
I really enjoy the flow of this dialogue. I hope to see more content like this. 49:48 the distinction between love of god and gnosis of god and the relation to the john of the gospel and the john of revelation following the talk about shadow projection makes me inquire into the protestant and catholic traditions as to how they might make a similar move in their interpretations of the identities of jesus and mary. It's taken for granted here in this dialogue that jesus, a man without a family of his own making, never had sexual relationships. Well, that assumption is technically unfounded. And if we are to be realistic about mary, maybe the virgin narrative is incomplete. Perhaps jesus was the 'the son of david' in the way that king david seduced bathsheba and had children. Not to say that herod was like david in many other ways than as a monarch, but metaphors seem to hold the most weight in the context of their times. Robert Graves suggested this possibility. 1:12:05. I think of teilhard de chardin from the "phenomenon of man", and the 'hyper-personalization' that he suggests is the ideal that christiandom actually embodies. Somewhat related to the conversation is a quote from the dry salvages (eliot) 'It seems, as one becomes older, That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence- Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution, Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past. The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being, Fruition, fulfilment, security or affecton, Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination-- We had the experience but missed the meaning, And approach to the meaning restores the experience In a different form, beyond any meaning We can assign to happiness. I have said before That the past experience revived in the meaning Is not the experience of one life only But of many generations - not forgetting Something that is probably quite ineffable: The backward look behind the assurance Of recorded history, the backward half-look Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.'
It is possible that Jesus had such relationships, but I think Jung's point holds regardless of the historical facts here (which nobody can determine for certain). Jung is focused on the available prophetic visions and reception history within the Church, where the virginity of Mary and chasteness of Jesus are dogmas.
@@Footnotes2Plato Yep - he is explicitly considering the mythic/archetypal psychological Jesus figure, not the historical man. So the analysis of his (in)humanity concerns the "function" (a word I'm realising I use far too often) of this mythic/conceptual persona in the ongoing evolution of the Trinity (+ Earthy fourth!)
I don't think jung is utilizing the gestalt of prophetic visions available in judeo-christian history. For example, the history of judaism as revealed through the scriptures is flooded with iconoclastic impulses. Yahweh expresses different tones in scripture and the name was never personified in image whereas bordering tribes were known to fetishize representations of the ideal through idolatry. and it was cause for war. I think one could safely estimate from the given history that the death of the christ was the apex and culmination of this conflict. As if the thinkers of this tradition were saying, "hey, the false singularity of these idols don't work for human liberation. everyone else around seems to get off on enslaving other people to serve the projection of their identities onto static constructs. abraham was asked to make a symbolic move and he seemed willing. let's move it to main stage." so they put a prophet on a donkey and paraded him around town knowing full well he'd be hung up saying 'this is the son of god. god's lineage is broken through this act. now, you all bear the responsibility of the future. after all, you are in him as he is in you.' If one is to take seriously the implications of this narrative it has to be freed from the fetters of the historical amusement with miracles (literary, poetic, psychological devices) and be humanized.
(A wish without expectation) If the hoards that hang on the words of Jordan and Brene could find there way here, a place of true and honest exploration and self inquiry, this waking / shadow integration business … anyway. At the pace of the courage of the collective world soul I suppose, I suppose.
I agree with how Matt Segall about completeness which Jung defined as being the opposite of perfection. Jung 1953 Mysterium Conuinctionis. Completeness includes the feminine material, instinctual and biological human body. The anima mundi would be like sophia and the spiritual aspect of the feminine which is undifferentiated. The self archetype includes totality, unity and wholeness. or both of these opposites, the conscious and unconscious. The idea of Plato's ideal forms and the trinity is absolutely transcendent. Whitehead is correct about that. Those forms symbolize archetypes, but not actual, physical forms. The crystal is a symbol of the self. Jung, 1951. Aion. Jung used a crystal as an example of the archetype. The shape and angles of a crystal is dictated by its geometry and the arrangements of their atoms and molecular angle of the orbitals and their atomic, elemental, chemical composition. The planet Uranus symbolizes geometry and mathematics. We have those first principles of physics and new ideas and inventions have to be conformed or supported by them or they don't work. The same is true about the organization of psychological principles. Archetypes organizes images and ideas in an unconscious way which can only be determined afterwards. Jung. On the nature of the psyche. This is where the logos and creative mind apply. Jung gave credit to the archetypal feminine, the unconscious for lucky ideas. Jung used the idea of the hydrogen bomb, that the level of consciousness had to be high enough first. The result was the idea of radiation implosion was completely independently discovered by physicists Teller Ulam, and Sakharov from two different countries around the same time in the 1950s, but the knowledge, technology and level of understanding or consciousness had to be their first and then the time is right for epiphanies in physics. People also like to say that Jung was too much in his imagination or undifferentiated thinking. Does creativity really only come from humans or do they need help from god? It is a mistake to think we have completely differentiated or exhausted the unconscious which is the apeirion or infinite. Jung never said that or ever implied that, but wrote that we think we have arrived at the summit of knowledge, but we have not.
Another great coversation, with the direction that the discussion went toward the end yall got me wondering to what degree, if any, Jung was influenced by Fichte. I might be totally off here in thinking that i heard some Fichteian sort of ideas, but i would love to hear you thought on weather that may be a relivent line of inquiry
@@Footnotes2Plato to be fair, i still feel like im just trying to understand Fichte, so I am not sure if I don't fully get where he's coming from yet. I figured you would be a good person to ask. Thank you~
"I am not aware of having plagiarised Fichte, whom I have not read." - This from the foreword Jung contributed to a 1935 book by Rose Mehlich called "Fichte's Psychology and its Relation to the Present". I assume you're referring to the concept of anstoss, and I agree there are some real similarities to what we were discussing there. The aforementioned foreword is published in "The Symbolic Life" (Collected Works Vol. 18) and is really worth reading if you've got a copy. It's an absolute banger and replete with Jung's (exceptionally lucid) justifications of his eschewal of philosophy, criticisms of natural science etc. Matt, you should definitely read it, and we should include reflections on it in one of our future Jung discussions. I hadn't read it before this, so thanks @alykathryn for stimulating me to dig it out. This is well before Answer to Job, clearly, but I'm not aware of Jung discussing Fichte elsewhere (doesn't mean he doesn't!). Notably, in his History of Modern Psychology lectures (1933-1934) he jumps straight from Kant to Schelling and Hegel.
This was great. I agree that Jung doesn't go far enough into the metaphysical territory explicitly, but, Matt, I'm curious: why do you say that Steiner really needs psychoanalysis?
There are some biases in his thought, and despite lectures on almost every subject imaginable there’s an almost total lack of any mention of sex. For example.
@@Footnotes2Plato do you have any specific examples of his biases? I mean, I do have some disagreements with him too, but I'm curious about what you think those biases are. Also, it's true that he almost never mentions sex. There's one lecture where he is asked if women should be allowed to teach and he makes a joke which seemed so atypical of him saying something like yes, they should, especially if we are talking about some attractive woman *wink wink*.
@horatiuchituc2139 I hadn’t read that line before! I’m thinking of his comments about race especially. And also his apparent need for epistemological certainty, whether in geometry or clairvoyance.
Completeness as Jung defined it is not the same as the symbol of the self, totality, unity, etc. One can make a statue of stone and it will be complete but limited in space time and the material. One of my favorite examples from twilight zone: th-cam.com/video/ydbxuR_YV0Q/w-d-xo.html
Matt, I am so so sorry for your loss - I have so much compassion for how utterly devastating it can be to lose a companion, especially out of the blue:(
Although this is the first time I’ve commented, I’ve insatiably followed you/your conversations here for quite some time, and attended the *amazing* Iain McGilchrist conference in SF in March (Bravo btw!) - and feel compelled within the first minute of this video to (finally) express my immense gratitude & appreciation for you and all that you share with the world. Thank you endlessly.
Sending support & blessings🐾🙏
Thank you very much
@@Footnotes2Plato
🙏❤️🌍🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵
Ditto to that!
Matthew, I am very sorry about your dog. Condolences. I have had many animals and still do, each loss I am with them as they pass.
A beautiful space you are sitting in, Mathew. Full of light and warmth of life.
I have listened to this conversation twice and I thank you both.
🙏❤️🌍🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵
Hey guys,
Matthew, I'm sorry for the loss of your dog. I really felt the sentiment in "less death of god, more death of dog", and appreciated the sense in which reading Answer to Job was theraputic for you. I think it is a characteristic sense of Jung's intetional ideas, in that, he is not merely delineating the antecedants and etiology of a condition, but also implicitly suggests the moral imperative of following up the realisations incurred by the reflection upon the condition. In the special case of Answer to Job, I feel, the imperative is to reconcile the tear or rift within the personality. A rift which on the one hand confounds it into a projection of its characteristic condition unto the physical world, and on the other hand, unto a psychical world, both of which seem ever fleeting from our limited grasp. To reconcile the two worlds within the personality will account for its individuation. Great interior design, by the way, Matthew ;).
Tim, as a side note, I really enjoy your digressions, especially as you admit an awareness of them. I find them to be really stimulating when I can track the associated threads you are weaving in them. In any case, I think the reason I enjoy your conversational dynamic guys is because you balance each other for me as a listener who is also a dissociated participant.
There was alot in this conversation.
Around 05:00, Tim, you've refered to Edinger's view of Job's situation as an encounter with the Self, which I think is only relatively true, insofar as the entire situation is characteristic of the psychological drama embedded within the fragmented individuation process. As Jung puts in (I read it in hebrew so I will paraphrase), and Matthew, you've quoted this in the previous dialogue, "That which exists in the celestial medium as an eternal 'process', appears in time as an a-periodical sequence, that is, it repeats itself frequently in disparate intervals". This statement is made clearer further in the page where Jung states that when these mythic figurations of behaviour, or subjective activity, appear in a modern context, they are not to be understood as personal occurence, but fragments of the eternal process which takes place in the celestial medium, and which was split by particular and temporal events. It is in that way which I think Jung suggests we conceive of the Self, that is, not itself as a hypostasised factor, but as that which is inferred from the total process comprised by seemingly distinct hypostasised factors, which he goes on to explicate as the quaternity of factors which constitute the Imago Dei, or most essentially, the Self.
I think this weaves neatly with the remark you've made, Matthew, around 16:30, about Jung's mention of the Buddha in the context of the ubiquitous efficacy of the pleromatic archetypal process prevalent at the time. Earlier in page 76, Jung says something which for me was quite shocking, as he is explicitly stating that the archetype may (may, I presume, standing for the empirical taxation as a caveat) not only manifest psychicaly, but "objectively", that is, external to the person. He again avoids "physically", but it is clear enough if his conceptual system is taken into account. Which is to say, the archetype can manifest in physis synchronistically, that is, as seemingly separate instances. Now, evidently, when discussing the manifestation of the archetype of the Self, or the Image of Totality, a relative degree of consciousness is already presupposed, as we are refering the locus of manifestation to personal subjects, whether it be Jesus or Buddha.
The problem, however, which I think Jung acknowledges, and the solution of which Erich Neumann puts beautifully, is that the archetype is always approximately articulated, never transcarnated, that is, as in the imaginery case whereby the archetype transposes its locus of efficacy from the formal to the actual. In effect, it means that Christ, if we are to take him as a manifestation of the Self, is not qualified by his "completeness", rather, by his one sided "perfection". A problem which Jung takes to bear with rigor in this book. Erich Neumann captures the moral problem inherent in this situation beautifully, and I paraphrase: "One must come to sacrifice perfection on the altar of completeness".
The ubiquitous efficacy of the archetype seems to finds its expression laterally, but with unique relation to the impetus of the specific "region of psyche" characteristic of a given collective. Jung is easily misunderstood thus as a plural essentialist, but what I suspect he is getting at is that by a factor of momentum the species drifts and splits into separate collectives which are then characterised by the psychical region in the context of which they inhere. I think a good analogy is the way in which an organism relatively similar to us may hypothetically evolve on a different planet, but will still require the particular ecological conditions of his nativity to thrive. Though I carried away to cosmic analogies, same analogy can be drawn on earth, where different life forms require different habitats. Can they adapt? Maybe, but over the substanial and exacting course of time. Maybe this is a fair analogy..
Around 30:00, Tim, I thought your discussion here was inspired and cogent. I espeically appreciated your description of the canalizing function and the notion of Katabasis. The dissolution of the Ego, or the canalizing function, within the unconscious, is not a permanent state, as implied by the poorly defined notion of "Ego Death", and although the Ego seems to habour a secret and persistent "death wish" to dissolve within the pleromatic unity of the unconscious, it must always retain its boundaries. In the dramatic image of Katabasis, the Ego makes a journey into the underworld, seemingly dissolves, but it must reconsistute itself in order to retain any measure of development. This seems to be a continious process of partial dissolution and reconstituion, otherwise the Ego would be entirely swallowed in the unconscious, thus marking the devolution of what might be the most complex achievement of evolution, insofar as I presume it to be a psychophysical complex.
Matthew, you've referred to Ahriman and Lucifer in both dialogues, which I do find interesting, yet still somewhat vague.
Steiner, from my understanding of him, is more of a trinitarian. He finds trinities everywhere, even in a social order, or the functions of the personality in Thinking, Feeling and Willing. To him, as I understand it, Christ stands between the polar opposites, Ahriman and Lucifer, which at the same time, are the polar forces which threat to tear every person asunder.
While he observes, similar to Jung, a collective process which is endemic to the Christ figure only, he sees in these forces a partial reality which Jung tries to subvert constantly, as he endavours to explicate the way in which the two are a four, and the three is made complete by a four. As an aside, there was a sentence in the book which I found to be utterly preplexing, yet possibly the best articulation of the problem. He says that people can circumvent, or more accurately, reconcile these critical conflicts which occure due to the splitting, only if they can get used to seeing in the number 5 an event number.
What a preplexing statement.. Though, I supsect its genius is implied by the fact that the quaternity is still not the Self, but the total image of the Self. The ultimate archetype so to speak. That which qualifies all other archetypes, or that of which all archetypes are but a localised and fragmented part.
In Aion Jung elaborates on the two beasts of creation- Behemoth and Leviathan. He regards one as the beast of the depth, and the other as the beast of the heavens. This view correlates to the view of the two sons of God. One being the devil and the other christ. But in that sense, Yehova is not different from that beast of the heavens or of the depths because he is an antinomy, as Jung puts it. Jesus Christ is but a sublimated figuration of a previously ambivalent God. Thus, Yehova is not The God insofar as he is constantly torn asunder when manifested in creation relative to his subjects, the israelites, and mankind in general. I think this is the key to understanding his idea of the quaternion and the role of the Holy Spirit, Sophia, as she was introduced into the dogma in the form of Marry. Yehova in the book of Job was unconscious of his shadow, Satan, and thus projected unto Job a figure which both devalued Job of his objective nature, as Yehova seems to be interacting with an apsect of himself in a projected form, and coincidentaly eleaveted Job to the pedestal of a being which is on par with Himself.
I also really appreciated the way in which you, Tim, have differentiated between the "unconscious" and the "unconscious content". The later being an instance within a medium, and the previous being the medium itself. The reconciliation of contents respective of the medium, that is, unconscious and conscious, are expressed in personal symbols indicative of a specific individuation of an egoic situation. Whereas the reconcilation of the mediums themselves, is expressed in symbols of totality, which are collective and impersonal insofar as they are categorical.
A bit of a ramble but I really enjoy your conversations and how it enriches me.
Thank you!
Yotam
Re: Lucy and Ahri, this will help: th-cam.com/video/6NUNniS1A4Y/w-d-xo.htmlsi=8OWqt5coEeSMZxoB
Thanks so much for these deep reflections, Yotam! Much to think about. I really value your close engagement with the texts and with our dialogue. Thanks also for forgiving (and even blessing) my digressions - It's my disposition to digress!
Oh no !!!! Dog put to sleep !! ??? 🐶😢🐶😭would that be Ainsley ? The one who was turning up in that cute short clips u posted a while back. r.i.p. to ur pet condolences
Excellent dialogue Matt ! Would love to hear from Becca in these Jung dialogues, make it a tri-alogue, her lectures on jungs red books and Tolkien were absolutely fascinating!!!!
Keep up the great work dr. Segall
I really enjoy the flow of this dialogue. I hope to see more content like this.
49:48 the distinction between love of god and gnosis of god and the relation to the john of the gospel and the john of revelation following the talk about shadow projection makes me inquire into the protestant and catholic traditions as to how they might make a similar move in their interpretations of the identities of jesus and mary. It's taken for granted here in this dialogue that jesus, a man without a family of his own making, never had sexual relationships. Well, that assumption is technically unfounded. And if we are to be realistic about mary, maybe the virgin narrative is incomplete. Perhaps jesus was the 'the son of david' in the way that king david seduced bathsheba and had children. Not to say that herod was like david in many other ways than as a monarch, but metaphors seem to hold the most weight in the context of their times. Robert Graves suggested this possibility.
1:12:05. I think of teilhard de chardin from the "phenomenon of man", and the 'hyper-personalization' that he suggests is the ideal that christiandom actually embodies.
Somewhat related to the conversation is a quote from the dry salvages (eliot)
'It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence-
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affecton,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination--
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations - not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.'
It is possible that Jesus had such relationships, but I think Jung's point holds regardless of the historical facts here (which nobody can determine for certain). Jung is focused on the available prophetic visions and reception history within the Church, where the virginity of Mary and chasteness of Jesus are dogmas.
@@Footnotes2Plato Yep - he is explicitly considering the mythic/archetypal psychological Jesus figure, not the historical man. So the analysis of his (in)humanity concerns the "function" (a word I'm realising I use far too often) of this mythic/conceptual persona in the ongoing evolution of the Trinity (+ Earthy fourth!)
I don't think jung is utilizing the gestalt of prophetic visions available in judeo-christian history. For example, the history of judaism as revealed through the scriptures is flooded with iconoclastic impulses. Yahweh expresses different tones in scripture and the name was never personified in image whereas bordering tribes were known to fetishize representations of the ideal through idolatry. and it was cause for war.
I think one could safely estimate from the given history that the death of the christ was the apex and culmination of this conflict. As if the thinkers of this tradition were saying, "hey, the false singularity of these idols don't work for human liberation. everyone else around seems to get off on enslaving other people to serve the projection of their identities onto static constructs. abraham was asked to make a symbolic move and he seemed willing. let's move it to main stage."
so they put a prophet on a donkey and paraded him around town knowing full well he'd be hung up saying 'this is the son of god. god's lineage is broken through this act. now, you all bear the responsibility of the future. after all, you are in him as he is in you.'
If one is to take seriously the implications of this narrative it has to be freed from the fetters of the historical amusement with miracles (literary, poetic, psychological devices) and be humanized.
(A wish without expectation) If the hoards that hang on the words of Jordan and Brene could find there way here, a place of true and honest exploration and self inquiry, this waking / shadow integration business … anyway. At the pace of the courage of the collective world soul I suppose, I suppose.
I agree with how Matt Segall about completeness which Jung defined as being the opposite of perfection. Jung 1953 Mysterium Conuinctionis. Completeness includes the feminine material, instinctual and biological human body. The anima mundi would be like sophia and the spiritual aspect of the feminine which is undifferentiated. The self archetype includes totality, unity and wholeness. or both of these opposites, the conscious and unconscious. The idea of Plato's ideal forms and the trinity is absolutely transcendent. Whitehead is correct about that. Those forms symbolize archetypes, but not actual, physical forms. The crystal is a symbol of the self. Jung, 1951. Aion. Jung used a crystal as an example of the archetype. The shape and angles of a crystal is dictated by its geometry and the arrangements of their atoms and molecular angle of the orbitals and their atomic, elemental, chemical composition. The planet Uranus symbolizes geometry and mathematics. We have those first principles of physics and new ideas and inventions have to be conformed or supported by them or they don't work. The same is true about the organization of psychological principles. Archetypes organizes images and ideas in an unconscious way which can only be determined afterwards. Jung. On the nature of the psyche. This is where the logos and creative mind apply. Jung gave credit to the archetypal feminine, the unconscious for lucky ideas. Jung used the idea of the hydrogen bomb, that the level of consciousness had to be high enough first. The result was the idea of radiation implosion was completely independently discovered by physicists Teller Ulam, and Sakharov from two different countries around the same time in the 1950s, but the knowledge, technology and level of understanding or consciousness had to be their first and then the time is right for epiphanies in physics. People also like to say that Jung was too much in his imagination or undifferentiated thinking. Does creativity really only come from humans or do they need help from god? It is a mistake to think we have completely differentiated or exhausted the unconscious which is the apeirion or infinite. Jung never said that or ever implied that, but wrote that we think we have arrived at the summit of knowledge, but we have not.
Another great coversation, with the direction that the discussion went toward the end yall got me wondering to what degree, if any, Jung was influenced by Fichte. I might be totally off here in thinking that i heard some Fichteian sort of ideas, but i would love to hear you thought on weather that may be a relivent line of inquiry
I know he read Kant, Schelling, and some Hegel, but I’m not sure how much Fichte he read. Presumably he was at least familiar.
@@Footnotes2Plato to be fair, i still feel like im just trying to understand Fichte, so I am not sure if I don't fully get where he's coming from yet. I figured you would be a good person to ask.
Thank you~
"I am not aware of having plagiarised Fichte, whom I have not read." - This from the foreword Jung contributed to a 1935 book by Rose Mehlich called "Fichte's Psychology and its Relation to the Present".
I assume you're referring to the concept of anstoss, and I agree there are some real similarities to what we were discussing there. The aforementioned foreword is published in "The Symbolic Life" (Collected Works Vol. 18) and is really worth reading if you've got a copy. It's an absolute banger and replete with Jung's (exceptionally lucid) justifications of his eschewal of philosophy, criticisms of natural science etc. Matt, you should definitely read it, and we should include reflections on it in one of our future Jung discussions. I hadn't read it before this, so thanks @alykathryn for stimulating me to dig it out.
This is well before Answer to Job, clearly, but I'm not aware of Jung discussing Fichte elsewhere (doesn't mean he doesn't!). Notably, in his History of Modern Psychology lectures (1933-1934) he jumps straight from Kant to Schelling and Hegel.
This was great. I agree that Jung doesn't go far enough into the metaphysical territory explicitly, but, Matt, I'm curious: why do you say that Steiner really needs psychoanalysis?
There are some biases in his thought, and despite lectures on almost every subject imaginable there’s an almost total lack of any mention of sex. For example.
@@Footnotes2Plato do you have any specific examples of his biases? I mean, I do have some disagreements with him too, but I'm curious about what you think those biases are.
Also, it's true that he almost never mentions sex. There's one lecture where he is asked if women should be allowed to teach and he makes a joke which seemed so atypical of him saying something like yes, they should, especially if we are talking about some attractive woman *wink wink*.
@horatiuchituc2139 I hadn’t read that line before! I’m thinking of his comments about race especially. And also his apparent need for epistemological certainty, whether in geometry or clairvoyance.
Completeness as Jung defined it is not the same as the symbol of the self, totality, unity, etc. One can make a statue of stone and it will be complete but limited in space time and the material. One of my favorite examples from twilight zone: th-cam.com/video/ydbxuR_YV0Q/w-d-xo.html