I will be releasing next week an extended discussion with Anderson Todd on Jung, the Meaning Crisis, and Jordan Peterson. Anderson is a practicing psychotherapist, lecturer on Jung at the University of Toronto, cognitive scientist, and associate director of my consciousness and wisdom studies lab.
. As a psychodynamic psychotherapist I look forward to that. I would also be really interested in hearing what you might have to say about the participatory knowing of Nonduality
Coming towards the end of this series I find myself feeling a sense of loss. Hearing for the penultimate time "Thank you very much for your time and attention" made me want to write this post. Johnny V ( written with all the understanding of the q&a in which it was mentioned) it is more than a pleasure giving you my time and attention. Watching this series every Saturday morning has been a transformative experience. You give me a more solid symbol of an archetypal sage to try and embody and internalise. It's important for me to write and hopefully for you to read, thank you very much for your time and your attention.
I’m becoming aware of the danger of discarding my ego in order to be the “self” i was always meant to be, as if ego was the shell of a seed from which the self grows like a tree. I see the danger of narcissism in my analogy that i was previously blind to. Many thanks for this one.
I love how "Conclusion" for Vervaeke means "I'm going to continue to challenge you for 3+ more hours in ways toward which you lesser minds are STILL unprepared."
I’ve been waiting for Gödel to come up in some small way this whole time and he finally gets a quick mention (at least this far into the lecture). Since I haven’t commented until now, I’ll take the opportunity to thank you so much for offering this series to the world, in such a gripping way, for free. Thank you for helping change the world.
John Vervaeke reminds me of an old football coach I had. His teaching style is like what I imagine to be a kind of meeting between Martin Heidegger and Vince Lombardi. ("Simmons YOU pull LEFT and kick OUT the blind side TACKLE"): this complete with a chalk talk including X's and O's and lines with arrow tips. I LOVE IT! From here on out it's COACH VERVAEKE for me!
"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and Jungian archetypes within me.”
I've been waiting for this since episode 1. Thank you, Dr. Vervaeke THE WAY OF WHAT IS TO COME: But the supreme meaning is the path, the way and the bridge to what is to come. That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself, but his image which appears in the supreme meaning. God is an image, and those who worship him must worship him in the image of the supreme meaning. The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together. The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfillment. The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and the blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew. The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and not have a shadow. The shadow is nonsense. It lacks force and has no continued existence outside itself. But nonsense is the inseparable and undying brother of the supreme meaning. Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadows and not the light. The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself. The supreme meaning is great and small, it is as wide as the space of the starry heavens and as narrow as the cell of a human body. C.G. Jung- Liber Novous
My mind was blown, again. I just listened to this lecture episode for the first time. And there were moments where I felt lost and moments where I felt deeply connected to the material. I look forward to revisiting these later episodes, just as I've done with the earlier ones. Repeated exposure and study has increasingly clarified this challenging, yet immensely rewarding series. Thanks, Professor Vervaeke.
Thank you for the insights to Jung and Corbin's indwelling of the "Self" and the world as a transjective experience. And the etymological breakdowns have been crucial in getting a grasp for some understanding of what you describe as wisdom cultivation in relation to the "Sacred Second Self".
Sacred second self, alliteration - you win. Chuckled. Thank you for the series and for being able to teach this extensive knowledge it to a novice. As you said in episode 1, it was made for everyone.
Damn Mr. V.! Couldn’t be closing in on more perfect territory for the conclusion of this epic! Reminds me of Perspective Art - we pass through the junkyard of life, a fragmented, atomized reality suspended in space/time, on the hunt for answers, meaning, and, perhaps, our true selves... and if we’re lucky we reach a point where looking back back upon the path of our journey, we experience a sudden epiphany; a realization of meaning. The peaks and valleys of “garbage” reintegrate before our eyes: a mosaic portrait of our past selves, providing a true reflection in whose gaze we see the truth, and where we must venture next. Temporal logic is the ego path to one’s sacred second self/illogical identity. Can’t wait for the final episode!!!
The idea of the relationship of the ordinary self and the sacred second self reminded me of the apostle Paul’s description of how the process works in Christianity: In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed (Strong’s G4972) with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest (Strong’s G728) of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory - Ephesians 1:13, 14. G4972: to set a mark upon by the impress of a seal or a stamp G728: money which in purchases is given as a pledge that the full amount will subsequently be paid It’s fascinating to see science reaching its culmination in religious ideas.
I want to talk about nonduality using your S1 and S2. S1 is 'God, the Consciousness dreaming the dream', S2 is 'God in the forms and contents of the dream'. They are the 'same self' - Atman is Brahmen. There is 'real novelty' between them - S1 can't experience duality without S2, and S2 is caught up in the illusion to forget it is S1 (hence the search for meaning). Just like the dreamer self-creates a dream in which they reside, not knowing it as such. That is pure self-creation YOU EXPERIENCE. Back to reality, where there is a non-logical identity between the illusion and God - so non-logical that a sizable chunk of the universe's population doesn't believe in the God that they are a part of. We participate in an emergence as the contents of the dream, God disappears into us (the forms) - fully and completely. S2 (Us) is fully dependent on the consciousness of S1 continuing the dream. You are describing the process of creation. S1 God is coupled to S2 God and is going through this transformitive process. S1 provides the sense of the 'sacred second self' that S2 is becoming. All of reality is affecting itself in this way. Excellent talk again, I always love your work even if I disagree with the non-theistic stance.
If YOU EXPERIENCE, then you are the object. The divine works through you, so to speak. Consciousness exceeds the individual. Crude materialism and the view of Self as Agentive over one's own consciousness and the consciousness of the world does not comport well with such a worldview. That's why I feel that at some level all of this is merely tautological and I don't see how looking to mysticism helps anyone with finding true meaning in their lives. Because you ARE the symbol in that sense and if you are looking for meaning in ancient traditions that you don't fully understand and refuse to fully engage with rather than embracing existentialism or post-modernism then you're just acting in bad faith.
I really appreciate your work in this series, and this episode really helps me clarify my own process. Brilliant elucidation about the ways in which Plato's and Kant's ideas give varying shadings to the terms and the dynamics. And the negative critique on the romantic view of a pre-existing, somehow already available individuality is so important to hear articulated so crisply. You have given me a lot to think about, so a big thanks! A couple of questions or points. I wonder why Jung's alchemical work concerning the sacred marriage did not enter into the discussion about the divine double. Modern Man in Search of a Soul is a great book, but it was published in 1933, when Jung was only scratching the surface of his alchemical studies. Psychology of the Transference, Psychology and Alchemy, and various other writings were still to come. Would love to hear your thoughts. Another point is about Freud. Have you read Bruno Bettelheim’s profound, little book, Freud and Man's Soul, about how the English translations of Freud's work ruined the heart and soul of Freud's thinking for us english speakers and for the world? The book gives a good argument that Freud had a deep, abiding sense of a non-theistic soul. And Ego meant the experiential process of being a subject. Simply "I". It did not mean an observable self image. It is what is doing the observing. That little book has inspired me to learn much more about Freud and to not accept so easily all the negative, reductive, and destructive critiques of Freud's work.
Sounds like the "Divine Double" combines S1's aspirations for a higher "Quality" Being; the dimension of the imaginal; a nonlinear sense of time that Christians often refer to as Kairos time ( there is a Xian prison ministry by that name). It sounds like, to me, this S2 dwells Solely in the mode of Being, as it relates to S1. It has always been funny ( slippery ) to me how hard it is to describe the being mode in our chronos world of finite time segments without correcting myself and redefining the priority of the having mode. It seems to me this "angelic shining mode" of the "S2 World" is part of what was expressed as the other mode ( correction "pole" ) of RR. It sounds like to me any aspiration of S1 for S2 will encompass some kind of identity with an S2 "World" -- a Quality world. I can imagine how hard it would be to express this in language whose building blocks are hierarchical. I see the difference between the imagination and the imaginal, but I can't quite square how Dr. Vervaeke speaks of the Novel transformation and change from S1=>S2, and the self identity with S1 => S2. Also, non - logical identity reminds me a helluva lot of Hegel's P of S. My own vision of what Dr. Vervaeke is talking about is a relation to the Being mode of the Platonic Forms but without the existential problem of how these Forms relate and interact with ourselves and each other ( ie minus the problem of becoming, or should I write " becoming as a problem" ? ). There must be a better way of expressing a "community of kinds" to integrate the Forms. Anyhow, expressing all this in language that has its meanings rooted in the Axial Age; providing a metaphysics that excludes , or transcends (!) Axial Age divisions; and bypassing references to Classical Theism sounds like . . . extra work on the weekends. Perhaps it will be easier when quantum mechanics becomes as much a part of the popular mind as Newton, Freud, chronos, industrialization, Biblical mythos, Axial Age presuppositions. I don't know.
Was reading a book about William Blake who found meaning in the world as the source of his imagination and creativity. In other words, he found no meaning crisis in his age. "Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy."
i am wrestling with the role that relationships play in the process of self-transformation and realization. This episode seems to refer a lot to the inner process (S1and S2, which i get confused with Kahneman’s systems 1 and 2), and how that relates to the world, but what about other people in our lives? this seemed to be implied in the discussion of agape, but felt incomplete. In trauma theory, it is thought that healing can only come about in the presence of another, and i really do feel this therapeutic process brings about a new identity, co-creating a new person...
Excellent point. I think a fair criticism of this series is its individualistic orientation. I have tried to correct that serious error in more recent work. Especially my work around collective intelligence in distributed cognition and my work on dialogical practices.
Great point, and a very clear answer from Vervaeke. It would be interesting to see what types of patterns emerge within agopic systems in families and small communities, especially during recover, where community is a significant aspect. While this may be helpful, I can see the counter-argument coming from the stoic "focus on what you can control", as you cannot control other people, and if you grow hyper - interdependent your family system becomes a lot less fault tolerant. This type of relationship knowledge would help in terms of general understanding, situational awareness, and even working optimally with where you are (or what you have), but presented to someone aspiring towards self-transformation, it adds more info that may not be hyper-relavant.
I think he stressed sometimes on the necessity of a community in a spiritual practice (sangha) to be effectively working the way out of the crisis. You will find (after socrates) series more interesting on this matter
Currently at 31:31 I had a new way of understanding the 'shining'. When hearing Prof Vervaeke talking the 'shining' of something, something like coming out of the cave came into my mind like when you get out of the cave, the light is too bright, all of the light looks the same but as I adjust to the light by changing myself and also changing how I see the light, I start seeing the contrast in the light like how some of it is much brighter and completely incomprehensible to me but some of it my eyes can understand now. I feel like this analogy has maybe already been talked about before in the series. Also maybe the way we can become modally confused in this analogy is by thinking of what we can now see as the truth as well as dismissing the still incomprehensible light present as something of little consequence because we think it is only one whole thing which cannot understand and that that's fine, (maybe justified by 'I know what I don't know').But this comes from forgetting that before the transformation all of the light(what you can and can't see) seemed like one whole thing too(as we could not see the constrast) so maybe the light we dismiss contains much more than what we think it does.
To aspire to an idealized self is to see fault in your current self, thus another conflict is created within! Relevance realization is primed to resolve the new conflict! Change and stagnation meet, and a battle of fate takes place!
I can't wait to speak with you in person one day. I have found your work to be quite like a secular liturgical calender. Perhaps it is synchronicity... Thank you and your video team for all your efforts. You all rock.
Within each individual life, S1 participates in the emergence of S2 and then disappears, leaving the soul-infused personality- S2. S2 existed before S1 within/as the Ground of Being. Therefore, I would say original, authentic, primordial Soul-Self and not use secondary. You express well how It recycles on various physical planes for conscious co-creative evolution, which always involves a participatory multi-dimensional loop between more than S1 and S2. My Grandson who is 10 apologized, "I don't know why I did that!" He noticed (S2-Higher Self) and corrected the lower self(S1). I asked him to expand his awareness, what watches S1 listening to and becoming S2? There are 3 levels of Being as parts of us we easily find. He got this!!! Subjective, Objective, and the Field in which they interact. I love the word transjective; the milieu in which magic and mystical reside, in which archetypal formation is attracted to incarnated souls , the energy of simultaneous opposites interacting (i.e. function & development), all the creative shakti is here eternally expanding from and as limitless potential. I would like to see you deliver this talk without mentioning a single author or voice from the past or present. Meditate in non-conceptual state, no thoughts or words, then SPEAK your inner voice, wing it, with only moment-to-moment inspiration coming through you. THIS is your future. You are GREAT hope for humanity.
I really appreciate the distinction between imaginary symbol and imaginal symbol. I feel that the problem with the divine double and the notion of angels arises from the conflation and equivocation of these two. I think it becomes more difficult to keep the two kinds of symbols separate as we find ourselves depending more on logic and logical rationality and Philia Nikia. I also find the Netflix series “Living With Yourself” with Paul Rudd to be a very funny accompaniment to this notion in that the S1 self and the S2 self, improperly transforming via cheat code, find themselves living in the same world. The S1 self failed to be alchemized into S2 self. Watching the show feels creepy and transformative, quite a mixture.
There is a kind of magical thinking in Jung suggesting that we evolved the archetypes to deal with local or current dilemmas presented to humans by survival and fittedness, that is missing the concept that by establishing archetypes and technologies as miniaturizations of the world we have constructed our own mystery landscape and can thus dispel the restrictions that it imposes on us by simply recognizing the archetypes. There is a kind of vaguely educational paradigm that defines how the archetypes are connected to "reality". This may simply be an artifact or a reflection of the recent condition of electrical mass communication. Is an archetype constructed or learned or both, or neither?
The psychology that transcends Jung, Heidegger and Corbin is HEGEL. People do not have ideas. Ideas have people. Cognition is refined through the process of participation in an activity, e.g. riding a bicycle. The activity is self-aware, i.e. it forms a feedback loop by which the activity is refined, while the self is not necessarily aware of how the process is accomplished, nor is it in control of the process. Correspondingly a schema is formed in the mind of the individual, i.e. thought is an emergent process from activity. The same applies to social cognition, the zeitgeist is emergent from each individual's engagement with society, but it is more than the sum of each individual's thought processes or self-awareness. The collective unconscious is the movement of the collective being/social cognition through time. This is opposite to the romantic endeavor that Jung engages in when trying to recover the archetypes from the deep unconscious. The Aufhebung is projection, negation and transcendence all at once. The impoverished cognitive grammar of the Anglo-American philosophy fails to describe this process in an accurate manner. Buddhism is at its root a philosophical idealism, in the same way German Idealism is. Subject and Object exist only in relation to one another. The purpose of meditation, just like phenomenology, is to reduce the perception of self, and this is done paradoxically by focusing on a particular idea or object. This is because one cannot exert direct control over one's cognition by exerting one's will. Also, the idea of control is a perversion of the reciprocity between subject and object/environment/monkey mind. The transformation exists for the narcissistic Western mind insofar as they are able to realize that they are at every moment being acted upon, that they are the Object, and not the self-transcendent agent that they deem themselves to be. This is why scholastic Buddhism, just like the Western mind, when estranged from its natural participatory context, engages in inward-looking self-deceptive behaviors.
S2 has causal power also, it is the formal cause. To me it seems obvious that there is also a final cause. It is something beyond even S2, what S2 is about: goodness, beauty, truth, God.
I am late to the party here so not sure if there will be any response. As I am listening to your characterization of the S1-S2 movement it dawns on me that in the discussion among the literature and in your presentation it seems that S2 is taken to be singular. That the divine double is a singular source of backwards facing normativity. I am wondering if the recognition of the divine double as a broad field of possible S2’s that S1 does not create but rather that S1 self-optimizes toward a path dependent approach toward a particular aspired to S2 from among many that in-iist as a manifold potentiality. Every possible S2 is an eternal form until a particular one is historically instantiated through the path selection of S1 as S1 enacts the aspiration toward S2. In addition, S2 is not teleologically unitary in another way. Using the example of rationality, a more rational S2 is not something particular any more than rationality itself can be reduced to a single concrete form. That is, rationality as John has characterized it is not convergent in the way that rationality as computational logic is. Our aspiration toward greater rationality is more of a movement toward deeper participation in an integrated framework rather than toward a concrete telos. A more rational future me or a future me that appreciates classical music is not a specific self I am aiming at but rather a quality of being that I aspire to participate in that can be instantiated in manifold particular S2s, each of which will provide post-hoc justifications for the path by which they were reached. Maybe I am missing something critical, but is seems to me that this may successfully reframe the issue away from the paradox of self-creation, avoid teleological determinism, and comport well with our understanding of our sort of being. We do, however, lose the idea of the divine double or angel as a particular reality to be instantiated (if that is not a figment of my imagination) but we keep it as a symbol or icon that points to a general shape of being we aim to participate in.
Haha small world! Hope all is well at MAPLE. We're really embodying the culmination of Vervaeke's ideas -- being immersed in an ecology of wisdom practices, developing a participatory knowing and getting an optimal grip on reality :)
I feel like a large problem comes from thinking of an archetype as a noun eg someone wants to be a swordsman, the problem is that's not really possible, but it is possible to practice swordsmanship, in other words you can engage in behaviour that embodies aspects of the archetype and increase your probability of embodying more aspects and more often, perhaps even reflexively, but you can't really BE an archetype, even if others label your as such. Which goes back to the bs problem.
It strikes me as a gross misreading of Jung to say that he misses the transjective. He addresses this quite explicitly with this concept of the unus mundus in which there is ultimately no distinction between the inner and the outer. The archetypes exist in the world as well as in our subjective experience. His very concept of the archetypes is that they have a transjective nature (not his language).
Yes I have come to reconsider my reading of Jung as I have read more deeply Corbin’s reading of Jung and I believe you are correct about the later Jung. I will say that Corbin is superior to Jung on this point because he works out a (largely Neoplatonic) ontology for the transjective while the ontological grounding of the transjective in Jung is not clearly worked out.
@@johnvervaekeTrue enough. Jung's entire way of thinking is rather difficult to follow. He's so deeply read in Western thought, so insightful about the nature of the psyche born out of his clinical practice and so intuitive in his thinking that he just leaves us mere mortals behind. But it also makes him one of those inexhaustible geniuses... Corbin has been in my line of sight for awhile. Maybe I need to move him higher up on my reading list.
Good opportunity in the first part to discuss Aristotle's four causes regarding S1 and S2. Specifically, S2 is the final cause of S1, while one's self and one's role models are the material and the processes of knowing are the efficient. Most important, however, is the formal cause, or the ground of everything. In our mediated world, symbols of superhuman aspiration and unreal/magical worlds present a massive complication. Keeping the human scale is essential, because gnostics tend to go a little megalomanic...
Would you say the divine double is the superego, criticising you with how far short you are from your ego ideal ...? Or if that not a frame you interested in, would you say it is powered by the right brain or the left brain or both?...
Heidegger was certainly in love with philo Sophia as he used philosophy Nikea to get his fame and modest fortune. He time and again bypassed rationality on his quest for being and in the end made himself into a silent night sky reverberating into empty space. Jung courageously brings us to the waters the fountains of paganism Heidegger hinted at but did not quench our thirst for power.
Strawsons argument appears valid on the surface; however, it is unsound because premise 2, regarding total novelty is questionable and creates a false dichotomy. There is no reason to presume that while maintaining continuity, S2, cannot be the same underlying self yet with novel aspects or secondary qualities. The question really is what qualities are essential to selfhood and what relationship they hold to self-creation. Another solution to the divine double problem is four dimensionalism- the self or soul which is the true self exists beyond time and this solves the rationality problem because it’s just instinct in a sense, or the recollection as per the Platonic Theory of Recollection...
These are very good and interesting points. Plotinus clearly integrates both of your points in his idea of the undescended part of the psyche that is the true self and dwells in eternal participation.
John Vervaeke I love the work you are doing! I have a undergraduate degree in Philosophy but am not currently in the academic sphere. Would you be looking for outside individuals who would like to volunteer to assist you in your research? I would love to work with an esteemed academic, like yourself, and help in the production of important philosophical works and ideas. I have many ideas that could be of use to the academic community on these topics... I am an independent Philosopher who is currently collecting research to write a book in favor of a new kind of monism. It centers on Platonic ideas and supports Berkeleyan Idealism. The main thread of the argument I am trying to make in support of this metaphysics centers on the participatory epistemology of people like Goethe, Jung and Corbin... They provide compelling evidence that the Imaginal or archetypal realms are ontologically real, and are real clues, as intermediary realms or bridges between the mental and the “physical”... The link Berkeley was missing. I would love to explain what I mean in more detail if this at all interests you! Thank you for your response! You made my day! :) My email is victoria.j.bront@gmail.com. Please let me know if I can be of service...
27:24 I have made an artistic presentation (a highly dynamical objekt) of this that through a 12 years on and of process has evol-wed (love itself) to come into being and I would like to share it with some who can apritiate it. My current thinking is that it can afford a very reliable relationship with your divine dobble, in a very concrete way and create a contingent path towards on the aspirational path.
I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated
Surprised JV didn't pick up on the etymological root of "authority" when saying this: S1 has the causal power, but S2 has the normative authority . When at S1 and aspiring toward S2, how do I relate to S2, that doesn’t yet exist, yet has authority over me? Etymology of "author": father, creator, one who brings about, one who makes or creates; literally "one who causes to grow," agent noun from auctus, past participle of augere "to increase," from PIE root *aug- "to increase."
...the divine double seems you say to have access to truth and goodness in the way a imaginary image or symbol doesnt have... but this is no small matter ... so how does the sacred second self have access to this power?..
I can't claim to understand Jung (can anyone?), but I never got the sense that Jungian self is anything like the sacred second self; it's simply a totality of the psyche, which includes the ego, the shadow, anima/animus, archetypes - it's all of it. ("The ego is, by definition, subordinate to the self and is related to it like a part to the whole " - Aion, paragraph 9). Crucially, it's not an ideal we aspire to, even though individuation is about integrating those unconscious parts of the self. I would also question the claim that Jung views these concepts purely psychologically. The idea of synchronicity seems to contradict this claim, because it points to a deep connection between the psychological and "objective". If anything, Jung tends to get *too* mystical and draws parallels between the self and the Christ, the self and the philosopher's stone and generally dabbles in alchemy, astrology and the occult. As for the archetypes, he describes them as something that "grips" you, not something you voluntarily participate in. In fact, he believes that the best way to understand them is as the "will of God" and makes it clear that they are a part of collective unconscious ("the contents of the collective unconscious are invariably archetypes that were present from the beginning" - Aion, paragraph 13). What's more, he seems to assign some sort of autonomy to them, which transcends the psyche: "They are without known origin; and they reproduce themselves in any time or any part of the world" - Man and his Symbols, page 58.
Very respectfully, to me a better way to understand Aspiration is to understand it as a part wisdom, not rationality. Aspiring to develop appreciation of classical music is good, but I do not see how it can be explained to be a rational act. There is a is/ought problem here. To me it appears that to rescue rationality, its notion is expanded in such ways that the word is becoming meaningless. A wise person needs to value good rationality, however, good rationality does not arise on its own. It requires processes which are not part of rationality itself like insight. Rationality is not just localized logic, but a deep argumentative justification. Almost the entire world uses rationality in this sense, we cannot redefine it. Rationality cannot be pushed to be something else. Rationality itself can be justification of bad action due to its limited and boxed-in nature.
There is no way to the unlimited except to the unlimited. We lost our way back in the Garden and now here we have the deepest deception in the newest man made limit as the final meaningful way. How far can we push the deceit leading only to deeper deceit and still call it truth? If history be a guide the answer will not be limited in its final destructive consequence.
I will be releasing next week an extended discussion with Anderson Todd on Jung, the Meaning Crisis, and Jordan Peterson. Anderson is a practicing psychotherapist, lecturer on Jung at the University of Toronto, cognitive scientist, and associate director of my consciousness and wisdom studies lab.
That would be interesting.
. As a psychodynamic psychotherapist I look forward to that. I would also be really interested in hearing what you might have to say about the participatory knowing of Nonduality
Awesome...
Coming towards the end of this series I find myself feeling a sense of loss. Hearing for the penultimate time "Thank you very much for your time and attention" made me want to write this post. Johnny V ( written with all the understanding of the q&a in which it was mentioned) it is more than a pleasure giving you my time and attention. Watching this series every Saturday morning has been a transformative experience. You give me a more solid symbol of an archetypal sage to try and embody and internalise. It's important for me to write and hopefully for you to read, thank you very much for your time and your attention.
Thank you for your very kind words. They are much appreciated.
after socrates
I’m becoming aware of the danger of discarding my ego in order to be the “self” i was always meant to be, as if ego was the shell of a seed from which the self grows like a tree.
I see the danger of narcissism in my analogy that i was previously blind to.
Many thanks for this one.
I love how "Conclusion" for Vervaeke means "I'm going to continue to challenge you for 3+ more hours in ways toward which you lesser minds are STILL unprepared."
😂 yeah right.. so a bit of Jung anyone, just to finish off with 👌🏼👌🏼
I’m so glad i knew some Jung from before on this, kept me afloat
I’ve been waiting for Gödel to come up in some small way this whole time and he finally gets a quick mention (at least this far into the lecture).
Since I haven’t commented until now, I’ll take the opportunity to thank you so much for offering this series to the world, in such a gripping way, for free. Thank you for helping change the world.
The more comprehensive analysis you can find in "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" - almost 900 pages
John Vervaeke reminds me of an old football coach I had. His teaching style is like what I imagine to be a kind of meeting between Martin Heidegger and Vince Lombardi. ("Simmons YOU pull LEFT and kick OUT the blind side TACKLE"): this complete with a chalk talk including X's and O's and lines with arrow tips. I LOVE IT! From here on out it's COACH VERVAEKE for me!
"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and Jungian archetypes within me.”
Thanks John.
Thanks Lee.
i have been listening all year to this Piano piece..when I beard this playing I knew I needed to start to listen
thank you...thank you.
I've been waiting for this since episode 1. Thank you, Dr. Vervaeke
THE WAY OF WHAT IS TO COME:
But the supreme meaning is the path, the way and the bridge to what is to come. That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself, but his image which appears in the supreme meaning. God is an image, and those who worship him must worship him in the image of the supreme meaning.
The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together.
The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfillment.
The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and the blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew.
The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and not have a shadow.
The shadow is nonsense. It lacks force and has no continued existence outside itself. But nonsense is the inseparable and undying brother of the supreme meaning.
Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadows and not the light.
The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself.
The supreme meaning is great and small, it is as wide as the space of the starry heavens and as narrow as the cell of a human body.
C.G. Jung- Liber Novous
Good on you for taking the time to type that out. /thumbsup
Thanks, Sir. As a Jungian, by heart, if not by understanding, the lecture was a delight. Looking forward to the final. :-)
My mind was blown, again. I just listened to this lecture episode for the first time. And there were moments where I felt lost and moments where I felt deeply connected to the material. I look forward to revisiting these later episodes, just as I've done with the earlier ones. Repeated exposure and study has increasingly clarified this challenging, yet immensely rewarding series.
Thanks, Professor Vervaeke.
I greatly appreciate YOUR time JV ❤️🍄
Thank you for the insights to Jung and Corbin's indwelling of the "Self" and the world as a transjective experience. And the etymological breakdowns have been crucial in getting a grasp for some understanding of what you describe as wisdom cultivation in relation to the "Sacred Second Self".
Insanely great work. Thank you!
Sacred second self, alliteration - you win. Chuckled. Thank you for the series and for being able to teach this extensive knowledge it to a novice. As you said in episode 1, it was made for everyone.
Damn Mr. V.! Couldn’t be closing in on more perfect territory for the conclusion of this epic! Reminds me of Perspective Art - we pass through the junkyard of life, a fragmented, atomized reality suspended in space/time, on the hunt for answers, meaning, and, perhaps, our true selves... and if we’re lucky we reach a point where looking back back upon the path of our journey, we experience a sudden epiphany; a realization of meaning. The peaks and valleys of “garbage” reintegrate before our eyes: a mosaic portrait of our past selves, providing a true reflection in whose gaze we see the truth, and where we must venture next. Temporal logic is the ego path to one’s sacred second self/illogical identity. Can’t wait for the final episode!!!
The idea of the relationship of the ordinary self and the sacred second self reminded me of the apostle Paul’s description of how the process works in Christianity:
In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed (Strong’s G4972) with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest (Strong’s G728) of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory - Ephesians 1:13, 14.
G4972: to set a mark upon by the impress of a seal or a stamp
G728: money which in purchases is given as a pledge that the full amount will subsequently be paid
It’s fascinating to see science reaching its culmination in religious ideas.
I want to talk about nonduality using your S1 and S2. S1 is 'God, the Consciousness dreaming the dream', S2 is 'God in the forms and contents of the dream'. They are the 'same self' - Atman is Brahmen. There is 'real novelty' between them - S1 can't experience duality without S2, and S2 is caught up in the illusion to forget it is S1 (hence the search for meaning). Just like the dreamer self-creates a dream in which they reside, not knowing it as such. That is pure self-creation YOU EXPERIENCE. Back to reality, where there is a non-logical identity between the illusion and God - so non-logical that a sizable chunk of the universe's population doesn't believe in the God that they are a part of. We participate in an emergence as the contents of the dream, God disappears into us (the forms) - fully and completely. S2 (Us) is fully dependent on the consciousness of S1 continuing the dream.
You are describing the process of creation. S1 God is coupled to S2 God and is going through this transformitive process. S1 provides the sense of the 'sacred second self' that S2 is becoming. All of reality is affecting itself in this way.
Excellent talk again, I always love your work even if I disagree with the non-theistic stance.
You need to check out Bernardo Kastrup. Vervaeke just debated him today on this very topic.
@@fpalisse I'm a big fan of Kastrup's. He's seen the other side for sure.
Do you have a link to the debate?
@@brentonbrenton9964 no it was live. Curt said he will post it in a few days. Here is the original link.
th-cam.com/video/kADTWMyXC9o/w-d-xo.html
If YOU EXPERIENCE, then you are the object. The divine works through you, so to speak. Consciousness exceeds the individual. Crude materialism and the view of Self as Agentive over one's own consciousness and the consciousness of the world does not comport well with such a worldview.
That's why I feel that at some level all of this is merely tautological and I don't see how looking to mysticism helps anyone with finding true meaning in their lives. Because you ARE the symbol in that sense and if you are looking for meaning in ancient traditions that you don't fully understand and refuse to fully engage with rather than embracing existentialism or post-modernism then you're just acting in bad faith.
The clarification on Jung's notion of the Self changed eveything
Critique on Jung and the modes of being... dang 😳🤯💯💯💯
Thank you so much for your insight, great work 🙏
I really appreciate your work in this series, and this episode really helps me clarify my own process. Brilliant elucidation about the ways in which Plato's and Kant's ideas give varying shadings to the terms and the dynamics. And the negative critique on the romantic view of a pre-existing, somehow already available individuality is so important to hear articulated so crisply. You have given me a lot to think about, so a big thanks! A couple of questions or points. I wonder why Jung's alchemical work concerning the sacred marriage did not enter into the discussion about the divine double. Modern Man in Search of a Soul is a great book, but it was published in 1933, when Jung was only scratching the surface of his alchemical studies. Psychology of the Transference, Psychology and Alchemy, and various other writings were still to come. Would love to hear your thoughts. Another point is about Freud. Have you read Bruno Bettelheim’s profound, little book, Freud and Man's Soul, about how the English translations of Freud's work ruined the heart and soul of Freud's thinking for us english speakers and for the world? The book gives a good argument that Freud had a deep, abiding sense of a non-theistic soul. And Ego meant the experiential process of being a subject. Simply "I". It did not mean an observable self image. It is what is doing the observing. That little book has inspired me to learn much more about Freud and to not accept so easily all the negative, reductive, and destructive critiques of Freud's work.
I would love to have John and/or other commenters critique my notion that mentors have a role in catalyzing S1 and S2 integration.
Sounds like the "Divine Double" combines S1's aspirations for a higher "Quality" Being; the dimension of the imaginal; a nonlinear sense of time that Christians often refer to as Kairos time ( there is a Xian prison ministry by that name). It sounds like, to me, this S2 dwells Solely in the mode of Being, as it relates to S1. It has always been funny ( slippery ) to me how hard it is to describe the being mode in our chronos world of finite time segments without correcting myself and redefining the priority of the having mode. It seems to me this "angelic shining mode" of the "S2 World" is part of what was expressed as the other mode ( correction "pole" ) of RR. It sounds like to me any aspiration of S1 for S2 will encompass some kind of identity with an S2 "World" -- a Quality world. I can imagine how hard it would be to express this in language whose building blocks are hierarchical. I see the difference between the imagination and the imaginal, but I can't quite square how Dr. Vervaeke speaks of the Novel transformation and change from S1=>S2, and the self identity with S1 => S2. Also, non - logical identity reminds me a helluva lot of Hegel's P of S. My own vision of what Dr. Vervaeke is talking about is a relation to the Being mode of the Platonic Forms but without the existential problem of how these Forms relate and interact with ourselves and each other ( ie minus the problem of becoming, or should I write " becoming as a problem" ? ). There must be a better way of expressing a "community of kinds" to integrate the Forms.
Anyhow, expressing all this in language that has its meanings rooted in the Axial Age; providing a metaphysics that excludes , or transcends (!) Axial Age divisions; and bypassing references to Classical Theism sounds like . . . extra work on the weekends. Perhaps it will be easier when quantum mechanics becomes as much a part of the popular mind as Newton, Freud, chronos, industrialization, Biblical mythos, Axial Age presuppositions. I don't know.
Was reading a book about William Blake who found meaning in the world as the source of his imagination and creativity. In other words, he found no meaning crisis in his age. "Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy."
Maybe all his art and poetry was affording life to be sustained meaningfully
i am wrestling with the role that relationships play in the process of self-transformation and realization. This episode seems to refer a lot to the inner process (S1and S2, which i get confused with Kahneman’s systems 1 and 2), and how that relates to the world, but what about other people in our lives? this seemed to be implied in the discussion of agape, but felt incomplete. In trauma theory, it is thought that healing can only come about in the presence of another, and i really do feel this therapeutic process brings about a new identity, co-creating a new person...
Excellent point. I think a fair criticism of this series is its individualistic orientation. I have tried to correct that serious error in more recent work. Especially my work around collective intelligence in distributed cognition and my work on dialogical practices.
@@johnvervaeke fantastic...i have tried the circling and dialogos and enjoyed it. Looking forward to checking out the rest of your work!
Great point, and a very clear answer from Vervaeke. It would be interesting to see what types of patterns emerge within agopic systems in families and small communities, especially during recover, where community is a significant aspect. While this may be helpful, I can see the counter-argument coming from the stoic "focus on what you can control", as you cannot control other people, and if you grow hyper - interdependent your family system becomes a lot less fault tolerant. This type of relationship knowledge would help in terms of general understanding, situational awareness, and even working optimally with where you are (or what you have), but presented to someone aspiring towards self-transformation, it adds more info that may not be hyper-relavant.
I think he stressed sometimes on the necessity of a community in a spiritual practice (sangha) to be effectively working the way out of the crisis. You will find (after socrates) series more interesting on this matter
Currently at 31:31 I had a new way of understanding the 'shining'. When hearing Prof Vervaeke talking the 'shining' of something, something like coming out of the cave came into my mind like when you get out of the cave, the light is too bright, all of the light looks the same but as I adjust to the light by changing myself and also changing how I see the light, I start seeing the contrast in the light like how some of it is much brighter and completely incomprehensible to me but some of it my eyes can understand now.
I feel like this analogy has maybe already been talked about before in the series.
Also maybe the way we can become modally confused in this analogy is by thinking of what we can now see as the truth as well as dismissing the still incomprehensible light present as something of little consequence because we think it is only one whole thing which cannot understand and that that's fine, (maybe justified by 'I know what I don't know').But this comes from forgetting that before the transformation all of the light(what you can and can't see) seemed like one whole thing too(as we could not see the constrast) so maybe the light we dismiss contains much more than what we think it does.
To aspire to an idealized self is to see fault in your current self, thus another conflict is created within! Relevance realization is primed to resolve the new conflict! Change and stagnation meet, and a battle of fate takes place!
Great Stuff! Finally catching up with the New Testament!
I can't wait to speak with you in person one day. I have found your work to be quite like a secular liturgical calender. Perhaps it is synchronicity... Thank you and your video team for all your efforts. You all rock.
Within each individual life, S1 participates in the emergence of S2 and then disappears, leaving the soul-infused personality- S2. S2 existed before S1 within/as the Ground of Being. Therefore, I would say original, authentic, primordial Soul-Self and not use secondary. You express well how It recycles on various physical planes for conscious co-creative evolution, which always involves a participatory multi-dimensional loop between more than S1 and S2.
My Grandson who is 10 apologized, "I don't know why I did that!" He noticed (S2-Higher Self) and corrected the lower self(S1). I asked him to expand his awareness, what watches S1 listening to and becoming S2? There are 3 levels of Being as parts of us we easily find. He got this!!! Subjective, Objective, and the Field in which they interact. I love the word transjective; the milieu in which magic and mystical reside, in which archetypal formation is attracted to incarnated souls , the energy of simultaneous opposites interacting (i.e. function & development), all the creative shakti is here eternally expanding from and as limitless potential.
I would like to see you deliver this talk without mentioning a single author or voice from the past or present. Meditate in non-conceptual state, no thoughts or words, then SPEAK your inner voice, wing it, with only moment-to-moment inspiration coming through you. THIS is your future.
You are GREAT hope for humanity.
I really appreciate the distinction between imaginary symbol and imaginal symbol. I feel that the problem with the divine double and the notion of angels arises from the conflation and equivocation of these two. I think it becomes more difficult to keep the two kinds of symbols separate as we find ourselves depending more on logic and logical rationality and Philia Nikia.
I also find the Netflix series “Living With Yourself” with Paul Rudd to be a very funny accompaniment to this notion in that the S1 self and the S2 self, improperly transforming via cheat code, find themselves living in the same world. The S1 self failed to be alchemized into S2 self. Watching the show feels creepy and transformative, quite a mixture.
There is a kind of magical thinking in Jung suggesting that we evolved the archetypes to deal with local or current dilemmas presented to humans by survival and fittedness, that is missing the concept that by establishing archetypes and technologies as miniaturizations of the world we have constructed our own mystery landscape and can thus dispel the restrictions that it imposes on us by simply recognizing the archetypes. There is a kind of vaguely educational paradigm that defines how the archetypes are connected to "reality". This may simply be an artifact or a reflection of the recent condition of electrical mass communication. Is an archetype constructed or learned or both, or neither?
The psychology that transcends Jung, Heidegger and Corbin is HEGEL. People do not have ideas. Ideas have people. Cognition is refined through the process of participation in an activity, e.g. riding a bicycle. The activity is self-aware, i.e. it forms a feedback loop by which the activity is refined, while the self is not necessarily aware of how the process is accomplished, nor is it in control of the process. Correspondingly a schema is formed in the mind of the individual, i.e. thought is an emergent process from activity. The same applies to social cognition, the zeitgeist is emergent from each individual's engagement with society, but it is more than the sum of each individual's thought processes or self-awareness. The collective unconscious is the movement of the collective being/social cognition through time. This is opposite to the romantic endeavor that Jung engages in when trying to recover the archetypes from the deep unconscious. The Aufhebung is projection, negation and transcendence all at once. The impoverished cognitive grammar of the Anglo-American philosophy fails to describe this process in an accurate manner.
Buddhism is at its root a philosophical idealism, in the same way German Idealism is. Subject and Object exist only in relation to one another. The purpose of meditation, just like phenomenology, is to reduce the perception of self, and this is done paradoxically by focusing on a particular idea or object. This is because one cannot exert direct control over one's cognition by exerting one's will. Also, the idea of control is a perversion of the reciprocity between subject and object/environment/monkey mind. The transformation exists for the narcissistic Western mind insofar as they are able to realize that they are at every moment being acted upon, that they are the Object, and not the self-transcendent agent that they deem themselves to be. This is why scholastic Buddhism, just like the Western mind, when estranged from its natural participatory context, engages in inward-looking self-deceptive behaviors.
S2 has causal power also, it is the formal cause. To me it seems obvious that there is also a final cause. It is something beyond even S2, what S2 is about: goodness, beauty, truth, God.
Triple alliteration FTW! 😅On a more serious note, in my end is my beginning.🤔
30:50 Divine Double illustration
40:40 Individuation (Carl Jung)
I am late to the party here so not sure if there will be any response.
As I am listening to your characterization of the S1-S2 movement it dawns on me that in the discussion among the literature and in your presentation it seems that S2 is taken to be singular. That the divine double is a singular source of backwards facing normativity. I am wondering if the recognition of the divine double as a broad field of possible S2’s that S1 does not create but rather that S1 self-optimizes toward a path dependent approach toward a particular aspired to S2 from among many that in-iist as a manifold potentiality.
Every possible S2 is an eternal form until a particular one is historically instantiated through the path selection of S1 as S1 enacts the aspiration toward S2.
In addition, S2 is not teleologically unitary in another way. Using the example of rationality, a more rational S2 is not something particular any more than rationality itself can be reduced to a single concrete form. That is, rationality as John has characterized it is not convergent in the way that rationality as computational logic is. Our aspiration toward greater rationality is more of a movement toward deeper participation in an integrated framework rather than toward a concrete telos.
A more rational future me or a future me that appreciates classical music is not a specific self I am aiming at but rather a quality of being that I aspire to participate in that can be instantiated in manifold particular S2s, each of which will provide post-hoc justifications for the path by which they were reached.
Maybe I am missing something critical, but is seems to me that this may successfully reframe the issue away from the paradox of self-creation, avoid teleological determinism, and comport well with our understanding of our sort of being. We do, however, lose the idea of the divine double or angel as a particular reality to be instantiated (if that is not a figment of my imagination) but we keep it as a symbol or icon that points to a general shape of being we aim to participate in.
14:00 Yay, there's Gödel! Was waiting a while for that one... 😂
Haha small world! Hope all is well at MAPLE. We're really embodying the culmination of Vervaeke's ideas -- being immersed in an ecology of wisdom practices, developing a participatory knowing and getting an optimal grip on reality :)
I feel like a large problem comes from thinking of an archetype as a noun eg someone wants to be a swordsman, the problem is that's not really possible, but it is possible to practice swordsmanship, in other words you can engage in behaviour that embodies aspects of the archetype and increase your probability of embodying more aspects and more often, perhaps even reflexively, but you can't really BE an archetype, even if others label your as such. Which goes back to the bs problem.
It strikes me as a gross misreading of Jung to say that he misses the transjective. He addresses this quite explicitly with this concept of the unus mundus in which there is ultimately no distinction between the inner and the outer. The archetypes exist in the world as well as in our subjective experience. His very concept of the archetypes is that they have a transjective nature (not his language).
Yes I have come to reconsider my reading of Jung as I have read more deeply Corbin’s reading of Jung and I believe you are correct about the later Jung. I will say that Corbin is superior to Jung on this point because he works out a (largely Neoplatonic) ontology for the transjective while the ontological grounding of the transjective in Jung is not clearly worked out.
@@johnvervaekeTrue enough. Jung's entire way of thinking is rather difficult to follow. He's so deeply read in Western thought, so insightful about the nature of the psyche born out of his clinical practice and so intuitive in his thinking that he just leaves us mere mortals behind. But it also makes him one of those inexhaustible geniuses... Corbin has been in my line of sight for awhile. Maybe I need to move him higher up on my reading list.
@@johnvervaeke PS Thank you for this series. I'm really loving it! The world needs it too.
In psychoanalysis, the divine double is the ego ideal
Good opportunity in the first part to discuss Aristotle's four causes regarding S1 and S2. Specifically, S2 is the final cause of S1, while one's self and one's role models are the material and the processes of knowing are the efficient. Most important, however, is the formal cause, or the ground of everything. In our mediated world, symbols of superhuman aspiration and unreal/magical worlds present a massive complication. Keeping the human scale is essential, because gnostics tend to go a little megalomanic...
Why no iTunes podcast of this legendary series?
Esta es la mejor crítica a la religión Que he escuchado.
Is Hans Jonas, student of Heidegger and author of The Gnostic Religion still a relevant source of understanding the themes in this video and the last?
Would you say the divine double is the superego, criticising you with how far short you are from your ego ideal ...? Or if that not a frame you interested in, would you say it is powered by the right brain or the left brain or both?...
Heidegger was certainly in love with philo Sophia as he used philosophy Nikea to get his fame and modest fortune. He time and again bypassed rationality on his quest for being and in the end made himself into a silent night sky reverberating into empty space. Jung courageously brings us to the waters the fountains of paganism Heidegger hinted at but did not quench our thirst for power.
"The system of archetypes are a Virtual Engine"... isn't your analogy just as mechanistic as Freud's hydraulic just updated and more refined?
Strawsons argument appears valid on the surface; however, it is unsound because premise 2, regarding total novelty is questionable and creates a false dichotomy. There is no reason to presume that while maintaining continuity, S2, cannot be the same underlying self yet with novel aspects or secondary qualities. The question really is what qualities are essential to selfhood and what relationship they hold to self-creation. Another solution to the divine double problem is four dimensionalism- the self or soul which is the true self exists beyond time and this solves the rationality problem because it’s just instinct in a sense, or the recollection as per the Platonic Theory of Recollection...
These are very good and interesting points. Plotinus clearly integrates both of your points in his idea of the undescended part of the psyche that is the true self and dwells in eternal participation.
John Vervaeke I love the work you are doing! I have a undergraduate degree in Philosophy but am not currently in the academic sphere. Would you be looking for outside individuals who would like to volunteer to assist you in your research? I would love to work with an esteemed academic, like yourself, and help in the production of important philosophical works and ideas. I have many ideas that could be of use to the academic community on these topics... I am an independent Philosopher who is currently collecting research to write a book in favor of a new kind of monism. It centers on Platonic ideas and supports Berkeleyan Idealism. The main thread of the argument I am trying to make in support of this metaphysics centers on the participatory epistemology of people like Goethe, Jung and Corbin... They provide compelling evidence that the Imaginal or archetypal realms are ontologically real, and are real clues, as intermediary realms or bridges between the mental and the “physical”... The link Berkeley was missing. I would love to explain what I mean in more detail if this at all interests you! Thank you for your response! You made my day! :)
My email is victoria.j.bront@gmail.com. Please let me know if I can be of service...
27:24 I have made an artistic presentation (a highly dynamical objekt) of this that through a 12 years on and of process has evol-wed (love itself) to come into being and I would like to share it with some who can apritiate it.
My current thinking is that it can afford a very reliable relationship with your divine dobble, in a very concrete way and create a contingent path towards on the aspirational path.
I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated
Surprised JV didn't pick up on the etymological root of "authority" when saying this: S1 has the causal power, but S2 has the normative authority
. When at S1 and aspiring toward S2, how do I relate to S2, that doesn’t yet exist, yet has authority over me?
Etymology of "author": father, creator, one who brings about, one who makes or creates; literally "one who causes to grow," agent noun from auctus, past participle of augere "to increase," from PIE root *aug- "to increase."
Really can argue with that alliteration argument
So, can we say that Ponty's "chasm" and Deleuze's virtual are re designs of Corbin's Imaginal?
Hmm that is a very interesting proposal.
I watched all of John Vervaeke and Jordan Peterson’s lectures, could someone recommend me some other interesting lectures to watch?
Pretty much anything from James Hillman.
...the divine double seems you say to have access to truth and goodness in the way a imaginary image or symbol doesnt have... but this is no small matter ... so how does the sacred second self have access to this power?..
I can't claim to understand Jung (can anyone?), but I never got the sense that Jungian self is anything like the sacred second self; it's simply a totality of the psyche, which includes the ego, the shadow, anima/animus, archetypes - it's all of it. ("The ego is, by definition, subordinate to the self and is related to it like a part to the whole " - Aion, paragraph 9). Crucially, it's not an ideal we aspire to, even though individuation is about integrating those unconscious parts of the self.
I would also question the claim that Jung views these concepts purely psychologically. The idea of synchronicity seems to contradict this claim, because it points to a deep connection between the psychological and "objective". If anything, Jung tends to get *too* mystical and draws parallels between the self and the Christ, the self and the philosopher's stone and generally dabbles in alchemy, astrology and the occult.
As for the archetypes, he describes them as something that "grips" you, not something you voluntarily participate in. In fact, he believes that the best way to understand them is as the "will of God" and makes it clear that they are a part of collective unconscious ("the contents of the collective unconscious are invariably archetypes that were present from the beginning" - Aion, paragraph 13). What's more, he seems to assign some sort of autonomy to them, which transcends the psyche: "They are without known origin; and they reproduce themselves in any time or any part of the world" - Man and his Symbols, page 58.
Very respectfully, to me a better way to understand Aspiration is to understand it as a part wisdom, not rationality. Aspiring to develop appreciation of classical music is good, but I do not see how it can be explained to be a rational act. There is a is/ought problem here. To me it appears that to rescue rationality, its notion is expanded in such ways that the word is becoming meaningless. A wise person needs to value good rationality, however, good rationality does not arise on its own. It requires processes which are not part of rationality itself like insight. Rationality is not just localized logic, but a deep argumentative justification. Almost the entire world uses rationality in this sense, we cannot redefine it. Rationality cannot be pushed to be something else. Rationality itself can be justification of bad action due to its limited and boxed-in nature.
Dreaming?
Wum
There is no way to the unlimited except to the unlimited. We lost our way back in the Garden and now here we have the deepest deception in the newest man made limit as the final meaningful way. How far can we push the deceit leading only to deeper deceit and still call it truth? If history be a guide the answer will not be limited in its final destructive consequence.
It would be interesting if one were to make Jesus the Christ one’s own personal S2.
Fascinating talk, but having read Corbin and Suhrawradi, I don't think this is an accurate representation of Corbin's thought.
Total crap. Meaning is not found through logic and abstraction. It come from an experience.