Thread: Carl Gustav Jung - Videos, Books, Ruminations

@ Rosanna - Yes, there should be a little checkbox on the page where you log in that says Keep Me Logged In or something like that. I don't remember because I haven't had to log in forever.

@Snoop - very cool!! That seems to be another left brain (limitation)/ right brain (expansiveness) thing, which incidentally sets this up perfectly for a new video that just showed up in my feed from Jordan Peterson. They delve into the left and right hemispheres and the transcendent function. This is a trip - and a nice synchronicity. Incidentally, Iain McGilchrist is the original source for the information about left and right hemispheres that inspired Gary Lachman to write The Secret Teachers of the Western World, which covers a lot of this same territory:

I'm going to make a few more posts yet before finishing the Active Imagination stuff, because I've just connected up a number of things and I need to do this before it all slips out of my mind. To set this up, when I had a long PM discussion with Slash112 recently I learned about Spiritual Awakening and that it relates very closely with Individuation - in fact to a large extent they're the same thing. Well, they are actually exactly the same thing, but Jung does posit an important difference from the Eastern ideas about complete Ego Death, also known as non-duality I believe. Slash, correct me if I'm wrong on that. I'm still wading through this, fitting the ideas together from different perspectives, and in no way am I any kind of expert. Really my main point in posting all this is to learn more about it.

Oh, I guess I should say what the important difference is I mentioned!

The Eastern (mainly Buddhist/Hindu) idea is that you should aim for complete Ego Death, which apparently causes some aspirants to suddenly 'disappear' when they hit enlightenment (according to the popular sage Sadhguru). I assume what he means is they stop functioning consciously at all and drop entirely and permanently into complete unconscious right-brain function, aka full Enlightenment. This would be like Buddha when he reached full enlightenment, and all he did was sit under the tree being enlightened, no more connection to the physical world anymore. This would be the state of complete union of all opposites, in which the motive energy for the mind ceases to be strong enough to keep things running, and a person loses all motivation to do anything at all.

Here's a video describing the Dark Night of the Soul or Ego Death, the experience of Void, which would equate with the Ein Sof, the Pleroma, Nirvana, Enlightenment etc - in other words it's the point where the Ego is dissolved or crushed into fragments, destroying your sense of identity which has always been contained entirely in the conscious Ego. This is the symbolic death that precedes resurrection, when the Self manifests (constellates) and you move from left brain consciousness to right brain consciousness. From limited, linear, logical and linguistic (left) consciousness to expansive, vast, deeply interconnected consciousness (right)*.



Slash has talked about how to avoid (Hah! a-Void! ) dropping into complete Ego Death and instead sort of developing a new Ego that's connected deeply to the Self (the Unconscious). Slash, if you would care to say something about that, I feel like you could do it a lot better than I can - I would just be working from my memory of what you said earlier. But I've binged a bunch of YouTube videos on the subject of Spiritual Awakening and Ego Death, and it seems like the Ego will undergo a frightening and depressing destruction (known as the Dark Night of the Soul), followed after a time by a gradual buildup of a new Ego that's now connected to and well aware of the Self, which also becomes aware of and connected to the new Ego. This would relate to that Edinger graphic I posted earlier on this thread showing the Ego/Self Axis and how it changes as you undergo Individuation/Awakening.

* Yes, I do know the right and left hemispheres are not completely separate and I understand parts of each function in unison to create both conscius and unconscious awareness, but each hemisphere really does function differently, and conscious thought is characterized predominantly by left brain processes, while unconscious awareness is created largely by right brain functioning. But it would be ridiculous to have to write that all out every time - so from here on out I'll just tag them for convenience's sake as left brain and right brain functions. Ok?

I also want to draw attention to this video, which clarified so many things for me:



It was posted recently on another thread where Slash and I first started talking about this stuff - here's where that discussion started to get interesting in Jungian terms: Why Aren't We Always Lucid?

For me, this video is proof that there is definitely something to the left brain/ right brain hemispheres thing. And that's why I persist in using those terms. The right brain really does seem to create the unconscious (I'm sure with some assistance from left brain and neocortex etc) and the left brain seems to be the home of the Ego and conscious awareness (same fine print as last time). And this coming from a neuroscientist.

Irrelevant post now

Glad you brought up Ego Death and Spiritual Awakening/Individuation.

The non-duality aspect of Ego Death is reflective of successfully reconciling the opposites that are, in fact, you. If you remember Lacan's focus on the mirror image and how the image it reflects is one of wholeness and unity, whereas our experience living and perceiving is one of many fractured perceptions and processes amalgamating into the collective "self", it's a matter of Chaos and dispersion and Order and collective unity.

Achieving ego death, though, goes a bit further. Reconciling the fractured psyche and all the signifiers of the self (your name, the image of you a mirror reflects, hand drawn pictures of you, or really any symbolic representation) with gestalt self creates a state of collective unity, yes, but ego death and non-duality occurs because of a complicated relationship between the concept of being a singular, unified whole and nothingness. Think Ein Sof and Ohr Ein Sof from Kabbalism or the concept of the ALL from the Kybalion/Hermeticism.

You see, when you unify to become complete/whole, you are all that exists--there is no differentiation or distinction between yourself, other parts of the self, other objects, and the world that surrounds you. At least, mentally there isn't any perception indicating such. When only one thing exists (a state of total order), nothing exists. Or well, that's what it feels like, and it might as well be the case. This all ultimately, of course, results in the loss of the self altogether. The loss of the self can be likened to nothingness. Since something still actually exists, of course, (talking both about yourself with ego death, or even the concept of something like the ALL), this nothingness is really just undifferentiated, raw potential. In other words, it is maximum Chaos.

If you notice, I actually just wound up saying that ego death is where you are both one and everything, while at the same time you are nothing. You are simultaneously maxmimum Chaos and Order; which, if you ask me, means you've successfully reconciled the two and probably found God or the experience of God, just as the paradoxical reconciliation of opposites was said to do either by Jung or the older guy from that youtube channel, can't remember which.

Wrote a big long thing here nitpicking on your terminology but decided to remove it. Nothing to see here - move along..

Just stopping by—lots of interesting stuff going on here. But on the subject of ego, the (Buddhist) circles I run in tend to avoid the term altogether because of its philosophical baggage. Makes it sound too much like a thing rather than a pattern—which then makes ego death seem like excising the 'you' bit of you, which is definitely not what we’re going for. That said, I have the impression that Zen Buddhism has a different take on this—and Hinduism, or some bits of it, at least. We definitely don't all agree (although the monists may disagree with that). But these distinctions tend to get lost when people start talking about East vs. West.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Wrote a big long thing here nitpicking on your terminology but decided to remove it. Nothing to see here - move along..

It's cool man. Honestly I've got something like a vice of being a pedant about things myself, although I try to keep from doing it. Next time if you believe there is a more correct, precise, or appropriate way of explaining any of my ideas or concepts I'm rambling on about (at length, too--I'm not good at creating a good organized structure for a coherent delivery of the ideas I'm discussing when writing out posts), go ahead and say so. The only real kind of passion I have in life is uncovering the truth... behind everything, pretty much.

So, if I'm not being clear because I'm not making wise word choices or everything I'm talking about loses its sense of narrative coherency because of going off on tangents or sloppily using the same word or term in two different senses of meaning interchangeably or several times back and forth without explicitly noting I'm doing so, go ahead and point it out to me. A lack of clarity in lengthy and more complex discussions like this only obfuscate our intended meanings and causes more of a discussion about what exactly I mean by what I'm saying than the discussion about Jung and psychology. It doesn't upset me at all to have it pointed out I'm wrong or mistaken, and at the same time I learn how to more effectively communicate with everybody in the discussion so I can improve anything I write in the future.

@ Snoop:
Well, I guess after I posted that cryptic statement I could at least explain what I was going all pedantic about.

I was wanting to point out that the Ego Death itself is not a reconciliation of opposites, that it's simply the destruction of the old Ego (which is a very one-sided state), and the full reconciliation takes place when the new integrated Ego comes into being, with a relation to the Self. Just trying to keep the terms straight so as not to confuse people reading and trying to understand.

This is in response to your last paragraph:

If you notice, I actually just wound up saying that ego death is where you are both one and everything, while at the same time you are nothing...means you've successfully reconciled the two and probably found God or the experience of God, just as the paradoxical reconciliation of opposites...

Though it's entirely possible I just misunderstood your meaning. It gets really tricky when we're discussing this kind of stuff - it's pretty surreal, as Labyrinth said.

@LeaningKarst:

Originally Posted by LeaningKarst

on the subject of ego, the (Buddhist) circles I run in tend to avoid the term altogether because of its philosophical baggage. Makes it sound too much like a thing rather than a pattern—which then makes ego death seem like excising the 'you' bit of you, which is definitely not what we’re going for.

Very intriguing. I like the idea of ego as a pattern rather than a discreet thing. I wonder though, if you don't call it ego, then what is it called? And what are you going for rather than the excision of the YOU bit of you?

Do you understand what Sadhguru means when he says some people practicing Buddhism or spirituality simply disappear when enlightenment hits? It seems to me that would be related to the Void state the girl mentioned in her video a little ways above, but some people stay there rather than it being temporary. But then I know very little about this stuff, and I welcome input from people who know more.

I remember some conversations here on DV from years back where people were trying to achieve what they called Ego Death - I thought it was related to Buddhism or some similar Eastern spiritual tradition, but as I recall now, it was also largely about psychedelic use (but with an emphasis on spirituality). It was somewhere in the deep dark parts of DV...

Ego. Aiight I'll say a few words about my perspective on Ego and Ego Death.


The way I see it is, we can never truly kill the Ego. We can tame it, and put it in its place. And we can do this in different ways.

I do like the Buddhist view on it. Buddhism basically says we have "delusive passions" which are to be extinguished. I agree that Ego is patterns, not a thing. And there are certain Ego patterns which are to be changed or removed. But you don't remove the Ego itself.

When I first became "enlightened", what happened was, I moved my sense of self into the "true self". When this happened, I saw Ego.
Usually, we see from the perspective of the Ego, because Ego creates patterns that say "I am", but it is a false "I am".
Suddenly, I was seeing Ego from the eye of truth. Suddenly, I am NOT Ego, I am WATCHING Ego.
To me, this felt like suddenly I am no longer Stephen, I am WATCHING Stephen.
Immediately, on some deep level, I knew what this meant. I knew this meant I was killing Stephen. Stephen no longer exists. Just me.

Ego Death. I basically acted as if I had no Ego.
However, it was Ego which said that I had no Ego. Ego was still there.
So what was really happening?

I had created a new Ego. I could call this an "enlightened Ego".
However this enlightened ego was watching false ego. I had split off into two identities. Both as false as each other.

What happened next is, I would swing between the two Egos like a pendulum.
Enlightened, not enlightened, enlightened, not enlightened.
Until finally I saw that the true self is the one which sees this swinging action. Even the feeling of being enlightened is seen.
I realized that nothing I do could bring me closer or further away from truth. So I just relaxed into "is-ness".

Then non-duality is the thing which fused my enlightened Ego and my false Ego. The reversal of separation.
Non-duality did a lot for me actually. But it was the simplest step of all. Suddenly there's no need to worry about the multiplicity of things. What is, is. And there is only this One. There is only me.

To me, awakening is all about gaining a higher perspective of Self, and learning to dance with your Ego.
Most of us go about life in a never-ending fight with Ego (Ego fighting itself lol). Sometimes you gotta start by just stopping the fighting activity all-together. Then eventually you have to pick things back up, and you learn to instead dance with your Ego, not fight. Some people just naturally transition from fight to dance.

Awesome - thanks Slash!!

Took me a while to process that and understand some parts of it. But suddenly I realized what you're saying about the 2nd Ego, and it still being a false one even though it's enlightened, is exactly what was meant by something in the Carlos Castaneda books. The Don Juan character, a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico who was an enlightened master, talked about something they called Controlled Folly. He said that after achieving enlightenment (he didn't call it that, I don't remember what he called it) you develop an unshakable awareness that nothing really matters - that in a way everything in this world is false, and at first you just fall into despair and want to give up. But after a time you learn to use Controlled Folly. That's a realization that, even though nothing really matters and everything in this world is false, you still act as if it does matter, as if it is all real. This is what I think you're referring to as dancing with the false Ego.

Ok, I'm going to put some time into working up that next post on Active Imagination.

Just wanted to post real quick because I had a realization. I understand now why even the enlightened Ego is false, and why you have to use Controlled Folly or 'dance with the Ego'.

It's because, in order to reach Spiritual Awakening (which I believe is another term for Individuation) you must practice ethical behavior - integrity. But then as soon as you experience the Ego Death, along with it goes the ability to discriminate - between Opposites, between Right and Wrong, between Good and Bad, etc. I mean, I'm sure you don't just become totally morally rudderless, or become a psychopath or anything, but if the logical left brain is largely shut down, leaving the holistic, non-discriminating right brain running the show, I can see where you'd have to sort of 'fake it' to act ethically afterwards.

Well actually, we can learn to use our "heart" instead.
When you drop all the mental chatter, something emerges in its place. The ability to just act by the "heart" in the moment.

The way I've come to see it is, my heart drives me, my mentality is a tool to use when needed.
It sounds like this means the right-brain takes over most functionality and the left-brain just being used here and there.
I gotta admit, that this sounds unhealthy and this merits some real scientific discussion.

Perhaps the left-brain and the right-brain at first become unbalanced, but then perhaps, because of the flexibility of the neural network, it just balances itself out and spreads all functionality across the entire brain.

This is all still a dance with Ego. Ego shifts about in your brain until it finds a nice rythym that just works perfectly. To me, this whole process is a natural optimization of life. When you first discover the truth(s) in enlightenment, you suddenly see there is a maaaassive space for optimization that you didn't even know existed. So it's then all about calibrating until you find the optimum.

The Ego technically isn't false. Ego is objectively true.
What is false, is the identity and illusions/fabrications created by Ego.
Upon enlightenment, one of 3 things might happen:
1) Identity falls back to the space of the true self/ the witness/ the void
2) Identity expands to cover one's entire being
3) Identity disappears completely

It's likely to even experience all 3 of these at some point. Different people settle on different ones. But they all have very very similar results.

Oh I forgot to say, you're definitely thinking along the right lines anyways.
I just had to clear some of that stuff up.

Also I wanna just clarify something, I still have plenty of mental chatter.
I went through a phase of having nearly no mental chatter. When chatter came back, I panicked a little bit, until I realized it's ok, so long as I remain the witness. Everything works itself out when you remain the witness.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Very intriguing. I like the idea of ego as a pattern rather than a discreet thing. I wonder though, if you don't call it ego, then what is it called? And what are you going for rather than the excision of the YOU bit of you?

Let’s see… I’ll try to explain as best I can, with the caveat that I’m borrowing from people who know what they’re talking about a lot better than I do. Not that I haven’t had my share of experiences as well, but having them is one thing and understanding them is another.

So—ego. In one sense, “ego” is what we mean when we say “I”. It has a fluid kind of existence in which some parts come into prominence during certain situations and seem to vanish under others, or gradually change character over time. It is not a solid, consistent entity.

In this sense, the ego is real, but it’s not real enough for comfort. As human beings, we really want it to be a solid entity, preferably one we can trust to remain one after we die, and so we try to convince ourselves that it is. It is sometimes X and sometimes Y, but we want it to be always X and never Y. Because it’s those people over there who are Y, not you, and X is the best thing ever. And since you’re a person who’s X, you do things like A, B and C—but never, under any circumstances, D.

This is ego in the sense in which it doesn’t exist and which is at the root of behavior we call egoistic—because we’re too busy trying to establish the thing to give much thought to others, and too caught up in our own self-deceptions to be able to act effectively anyway. But it’s really a much broader range of behavior—the common point being that, in the end, it comes down to seeing yourself as X and not Y, as essentially separate from your environment and those around you. And so the trick is to break the habit of doing things to try to convince yourself that you exist as you want to exist. You might still do A, B and C, but you do them because they seem like good things to do in your current situation, not because you’ve got a bone to pick with reality.

And it doesn’t require excising anything because the thing that needs to go was never there to begin with. But the patterns of thought are there, and they can be pretty stubborn. As a Buddhist practitioner, you learn ways of letting them fall into more natural patterns - ways that are less dramatic than having them break all at once, which seems to be what people are using the term "ego death" to signify. In either case, though, it's got to be something you let happen because otherwise, it's just more self-deception.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Do you understand what Sadhguru means when he says some people practicing Buddhism or spirituality simply disappear when enlightenment hits?

No. Your suggestion seems like a natural one, though.

From a Vajrayana perspective, there is a distinction between sunyata and rigpa. Sunyata is the experience of emptiness; rigpa is the non-dual state. So—to try to translate that into your set of terminology— experience of the void is not enlightenment, but it is an important step towards it. If you can’t take that experience with you into your life, you’re not there yet.

Yeah, good post Karst, and funny timing in you posting that.

Just today, events have transpired which made me realize that for the past month, I've been using the psychological definition of Ego. Which is conscious mind.

Before I started talking to Darkmatters, I held only the spiritual definition, which is what you've just explained there, Karst.
The spiritual definition is the sense of "I", it's the made up character we hold in our mind.

So, the spiritual ego is actually a subsection of the psychological Ego. It's a pattern created by conscious mind.

Some work towards completely destroying the made up character.
Mental hospitals are filled with people whose ego (spiritual ego) has completely disappeared and nobody knows how to deal with them. They get papped off with meds and are told to get better.
My ego was gone when I was in mental hospital. I had to re-build my ego just so I could get released. But I assure you I have never been happier than when I had no ego. I was living so free, I cannot even explain it. I was freer than free. I was truly eternally happy.

But, alas, my path ain't for that full-freedom. Not yet anyway. I realized this whilst in the hospital, and that's the point where I was starting to build my ego back up, anew.
I now keep freedom close while I dance with my ego. I've got a very specific made up character that I built, and I love it, so imma keep it for a while.

Originally Posted by LeaningKarst

Let’s see… I’ll try to explain as best I can, with the caveat that I’m borrowing from people who know what they’re talking about a lot better than I do. Not that I haven’t had my share of experiences as well, but having them is one thing and understanding them is another.

So—ego(...)the ego is real, but it’s not real enough for comfort. As human beings, we really want it to be a solid entity, preferably one we can trust to remain one after we die, and so we try to convince ourselves that it is(...)This is ego in the sense in which it doesn’t exist and which is at the root of behavior we call egoistic—because we’re too busy trying to establish the thing to give much thought to others, and too caught up in our own self-deceptions to be able to act effectively anyway. But it’s really a much broader range of behavior—the common point being that, in the end, it comes down to seeing yourself as X and not Y, as essentially separate from your environment and those around you. And so the trick is to break the habit of doing things to try to convince yourself that you exist as you want to exist. You might still do A, B and C, but you do them because they seem like good things to do in your current situation, not because you’ve got a bone to pick with reality.

And it doesn’t require excising anything because the thing that needs to go was never there to begin with. But the patterns of thought are there, and they can be pretty stubborn. As a Buddhist practitioner, you learn ways of letting them fall into more natural patterns - ways that are less dramatic than having them break all at once, which seems to be what people are using the term "ego death" to signify. In either case, though, it's got to be something you let happen because otherwise, it's just more self-deception.

Wow thank you! That's very informative. And it explains why I've seen videos about people saying they reached Spiritual Awakening by looking at themselves in a mirror for a long time asking who they are and what they are, and really trying to see themselves as they are.

It also made me understand the stuff from the Castaneda books where Don Juan was talking about shifting the identity into a new much larger context. That was baffling for me at the time, but now I see how it falls into the general pattern of spiritual awakening, which is talked about in different terms all across the world.

Originally posted by Darkmatters:

Do you understand what Sadhguru means when he says some people practicing Buddhism or spirituality simply disappear when enlightenment hits? It seems to me that would be related to the Void state the girl mentioned in her video a little ways above, but some people stay there rather than it being temporary. But then I know very little about this stuff, and I welcome input from people who know more.

Originally Posted by LeaningKarst

No. Your suggestion seems like a natural one, though.

Thank you - I appreciate the honesty.

Originally Posted by LeaningKarst

From a Vajrayana perspective, there is a distinction between sunyata and rigpa. Sunyata is the experience of emptiness; rigpa is the non-dual state. So—to try to translate that into your set of terminology— experience of the void is not enlightenment, but it is an important step towards it. If you can’t take that experience with you into your life, you’re not there yet.

Ok, got it.

Originally Posted by slash112

I've been using the psychological definition of Ego. Which is conscious mind.

Oops - I think that's my fault! I've come to realize just recently that I was wrong - even in Jung's psychological definition of Ego, it isn't the entire conscious mind - that was my own understanding of it. But really it's only a part of the conscious mind - it's the conscious center of the personality, as the Self (or Higher Self) is the unconscious center of the personality. However, if I understand right, most people do believe that their Ego is the entirety of the conscious mind (and therefore believe it's the entire mind altogether, since many don't believe in an unconscious).

Many thanks to both of you!! It's amazing to have your experience and knowledge to draw on for this thread.

Reading from the Red Book - Part 7 - The Desert

This is really apropos to what we've been discussing in the recent part of this thread, because the Red Book is Jung's journal describing his Awakening and what led up to it:



04:10—November 28, 1913--Sixth Night--“My Soul leads me into the Desert.”
05:41—“Is it solitude to be with oneself?”
05:55—Footnote--“I hear the words, ‘An Anchorite in his own desert.’”
06:25—“Only Life is true and only Life leads me into the desert.”
08:18—“I turned myself away from things and men.”
09:33—A personal testimonial and experience of painting.
11:30—Page 142—“Nobody can spare themselves the waiting and most will be unable to bear this torment, but will throw themselves with greed back to men, things, and thoughts, whose slaves they will become from then on....”
14:02—“The words that oscillate between nonsense and Supreme Meaning are the oldest and truest.”

Originally Posted by LeaningKarst

As a Buddhist practitioner, you learn ways of letting them fall into more natural patterns - ways that are less dramatic than having them break all at once, which seems to be what people are using the term "ego death" to signify. In either case, though, it's got to be something you let happen because otherwise, it's just more self-deception.

LeaningKarst - any hints on what to look for? Terms or something, so people can try to find the information? I definitely can't go to Tibet or India and take a lengthy retreat, or work with a guru. I'm hoping the info is available online or in books or something. Understanding these techniques would sure take a lot of the stress and fear out of it!

It seems like the difference between learning to drive by crashing a car repeatedly, versus taking a Drivers Ed class.

Hahahah yeah Buddhism is like taking driver's ed, my way is kinda like crashing until I get it right. xD

Both ways have advantages.

Buddhism is very safe.
My way shows me exactly where the boundaries are. I experience the boundaries.

I feel that Advaita Vedanta better allows for these crashes. But you can practice Vedanta without crashing too. If you follow the words of a guru perfectly, you will not crash.
I guess I've got a thing about being my own guru. The crashes are very important for me in those regards.

I can't comment too much on Buddhist practices though, I only take small amounts from Buddhism. But I always love to hear from Buddhists.

I really can't afford a period of psychosis or anything like that! And yet I'm not sure I can stop the process now - I keep doing binaural meditation and shadow work and everything else that leads to it. Jung even said once you start the process there's no stopping it, and I believe fear only makes it worse. I would really appreciate any clues that could help ease the transition.

Well, the way I teach Vedanta is actually perfectly crafted to avoid crashes. I built it because I experienced so many crashes and I want to provide ways for people to avoid it.
The idea with my method is to take your time through 3 specific stages. Each stage should be stabilized in before moving on.
So, my advice here is, whatever method you do choose, take your time and be patient. Don't try to experience all the truths in one go.

I wasn't gunna link my own website on DV, but it's relevant right now. If you want to take a look at my method, here are "The Stages": Enlighten Yourself - The Stages. But note that I need to update Stage 2, I will do that within the next couple of days.



I'm curious to hear what Karst has to say about it, from a Buddhist perspective.

Wow - that is awesome!! Ask and ye shall receive, huh? Or at least, don't ask and you won't receive. Sorry to push you into debuting your site early, didn't mean to do that.

I did a little searching and here's what I've found so far:



So this agrees with what you just said. I suspect it's also what LeaningKarst was referring to, though I also am curious about that. It does make sense - take your time, learn to drive in safe stages, and don't crash.