A hard lesson: states of mind can be easily altered but what a true mystic, Paul of Tarsus says, renewal and transformation of the mind and is not easy and without Grace it is not to had much less lived. Superfluous, glib manipulations of already entanced inductees via their own projections upon the entrancer serves more ill than good in terms of individuation lest it be a wake up emerging out of group/guru trance into clear adult, mature perspectives arriving from personhood and not the "sheep"-hood Osho speaks of in the above quote.
SO, imperative, one must discover and own one's sheephood :
where does one most want to be led, to give over one's own questioning and critical intellect, one's own authority? Where is one most likely to get "mugged" by one's dependency needs, dependency projections? where, and HOW, does one most want to regress into Innocence and long for a "return to the Garden," pronouncing that one's Fall is an illusion and propaganda of power grabbing religions? where is one to be most seduced into "return" to an imagined sinless beginning and who is offering such a return? Regression is hard-wired in our nervous systems and when there are appeals and promises of return via meditations upon fire, air, water, earth, or some individual or other who has transcended then one must be most awake. One is in perilous territory and one is also prone to entrust oneself and mind to some other who may or may not be worthy of such trust and surrender.
I am no authority in this matter but from my own experience and hard lessons, humiliating lessons derived from so many wasted hours, days, years being an unwitting sheep at the feet of profferers of power all the while disguised in "god or spirit talk" I have learned that no matter the god before one, the entrance into sacrality, one must not sacrifice one's ego and mind en toto to that which presents.
A dream of Carl Jung's recorded in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, illustrates what I have just said. From Michael Vannoy Adam's summary of Jung's dream:
"In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung (1963) recounts a dream ...what I call the “Millimeter to Spare Dream.” In the dream, Jung and his father enter a house that has a room that is a replica of the council hall of Sultan Akbar, the Muslim emperor of Mughal India. In that room, Jung’s father prays in the Islamic style. “Then he knelt down and touched his forehead to the floor,” Jung says. “I imitated him, likewise kneeling, with great emotion. For some reason I could not bring my forehead quite down to the floor—there was perhaps a millimeter to spare” (p. 219). Jung interprets the dream to mean that “things awaited me, hidden in the unconscious.” He says: “I had to submit to this fate, and ought really to have touched my forehead to the floor, so that my submission would be complete. But something prevented me from doing to entirely, and kept me just a millimeter away. Something in me was saying, ‘All very well, but not entirely.’” What was this something that prevented Jung from complete submission? “Man always,” he says, “has some mental reservation, even in the face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom?”
Jung goes on to say, "Something in me was defiant and determined not to be a dumb fish...Man always has some mental reservation, even in the face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom? And what would be the use of that freedom if it could not threaten Him who threatens it?"
Adams continues:
To submit to God without any mental reservation is for the ego not to engage in free, critical conversation with the unconscious. In this respect, to practice prayer—or active imagination—is for the ego to exercise the freedom not to accept the opinions of the unconscious as dictates but to assess those opinions and either accept or reject them. The purpose of Jungian psychoanalysis is not for the ego to capitulate, or surrender unconditionally, to the opinions of the unconscious but to relate to them effectively—that is, freely, critically—through dialogue and negotiation. Prostration of the ego before the unconscious may be the Islamic [and other religions] style, but it is not the Jungian style. Dialogue or negotiation with God (or the unconscious) is very different from submission to God."
Jung goes on to say this of this millimeter to spare:
"These were the things that awaited me, hidden in the unconscious. I had to submit to this fate, and ought really to have touched my forehead to the floor, so that my submission would be complete. But something prevented me from doing so entirely, and kept me just a millimeter away. Something in me was saying, "All very well, but not entirely." Something in me was defiant and determined not to be a dumb fish: and if there were not something of the sort in free men, no Book of Job would have been written several hundred years before the birth of Christ. Man always has some mental reservation, even in the face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom? And what would be the use of that freedom if it could not threaten Him who threatens it?" (Jung, 1963, p. 220)." Adams, 2002
Adams helpfully explicates Jung in regard to someone becoming what Osho calls an "entranced "sheep", and what Jung calls a "dumb fish" swimming around in, unconsciously identified with, the water one swims in, water being a symbol of the unconscious.
Spiritual teaching East and West value and require complete submission to their Deity, and to the teachings regarding the spiritual relationship, and ultimate salvation, enlightenment and transformation. Jung's dream seeks to preserve human freedom to consciously engage with, argue with, disagree even with even the Creator. This is not strange to religions. The Jewish Torah and other sacred books give many accounts of prophets arguing and reasoning with
Human freedom furthers evolution, risks dissolution but always seeks some way of knowing which affects one's being and ongoing becoming as response. Becoming aware of trance, of the abuses of trance (an occupational hazzard of consciousness), and how easily it is to shape shift into many lenses which shape or "create" one's experience of reality, profane and sacred, is essential human activity, it is what we as a species do besides make things. I personally believe that Mysticism precedes or should Making. Magicians are makers of frames of reality. They presume to act for and on behalf of Sacred Reality, are often inflated believing that they are the Creator Itself.
I have rediscovered that I am more inclined to the Mystic's path and not that of the Magician (the shaman, sorcerer, who must with impecability, at least in the attempt of that impossible state, not misuse the powers available to she/he who is initiated and, now with good enough depth psychology, aware of the clever seductions and manipulations of power.. Temperamentally I am more inclined to the former than the latter though I realize that the shadow lies in the Magicians path and have been forced upon it for the sake of some wrenching, humiliated and ultimately humbling encounter with shadow and the shadow of power and power of shadow."
This is all I have so far but I hope the a-muses will assist the next 2 days in making the above into an informative cautionary tale, a promo for Jungian analysis or its equivalent which advocates continual shadow work in order to remain grounded and uninflated by the powers which are all too easily available. Just look at advertising agencies and focus groups. Just watch "The Century of the Self" with Adam Curtis on google video and one will be horrified at the subjectivity of consciousness and "truth" and the abuse of trance states to sway individuals and groups into illusions/delusions of "freedom" and "autonomy"...none of us are free for trance seems to be wired in us...trances seem to be hardwired, capacities for trances...and thus the 10,000 things flourish...with this in mind a Buddhist or mindfulness practice which exposes the subtleties of trances in the "focus group" manipulations of religions/spiritualities/viagra and soap sales, et.al. or, eyes wide shut in the grip of ayahuasca or one's own self-aware/induced horrors make absolute sense…
from The Epistemology of Darkness: Preliminary Reflections by Charles E. Winquist.
"We do not mourn that we see through a glass darkly, we now rejoice in the dark loveliness of the glass. (Dominic Crossan,1975: 39)"
To 'rejoice in the dark lovelinss of the glass' is an alteration of values that suggests that we can know the darkness, think in the dark, or think darkly. The concept of epistemology of darkness is an experiment with this suggestion. Paradoxically we are seeking to illumine the possibility for thinking darkly. The heliotropic metaphor central to a familiar understanding must itself arrive at the strange configuration of an illuminating darkness.
Learning to see in the dark is learning to bring darkness to the light, that is, learning to see the light arkly. We are now in the heart of an epistemology of darkness that acknowledges that part of language 'has a completely unfathomable unconsciousness of itself' (Gadamer,1976: 62) . Can the darkness of language work on the transformation of consciousness? We cannot decide in advance of the experience whether it is possible and what it means to move the familiar and habitual world into the context of the imaginal world.
The task at hand is to replicate for seeing the light and familiar world of daily life in the shadow of the imagination. The world that we already know can then be known in the dark. We thereby teach ourselves to see in the dark so that we can live in the middle. This strange exercise is a taking hold of life. It is a valuation of where and who we are. The whole process is a work within a semantics of meaning and is a function of consciousness.
The immediately available paradigm for seeing the light and darkly is the common experience of dreaming. Dreams take daily life into the underworld, and the dream-work is exemplary of downward thinking (cf. Hillman,1975) . In the investigation of what it means to see darkly, it is not the interpretation of dreams but the interpretation of the dream-work that will be the via regia. This work will be hermeneutics of the second order. We are interpreting a process that is itself a process of interpretation. That is, the dream-work is an interpretation of the waking world that blurs the focus of a monocular vision and drowns the clear ring of univocal speech in a cacophony of metaphorical voices. The meaning of the manifest dream content is a psychological enigma, and the meaning of the dream-work is an epistemological enigma. Analysis of dream content and analysis of dream-work are both interpretations of a secondary order, and both of them are distinguishable from the primary interpretation that is identified as the dream-work.
— from The Epistemology of Darkness: Preliminary Reflections by Charles E. Winquist.
I, on the other hand,
have lain down with
countless thousands.
My tent is worn out.
Stains mark love-cries,
some blood where tongues
are ground down to root,
utterance hard pounded,
soft tissue torn letter by letter,
tender verbs opened to pain,
that which is paid for more
than alabaster embraces
and this strangling of waists.
My tent has drained more
of love's body than a mortuary.
Spikenard scented oils taint
fabric folds and flesh. Rote,
worn pillows are daily, sometimes
hourly turned where I half expect
to find teeth or coins,
hoping still for one true word
for love without name flies,
moths repelled instead by flame,
pillows revealing nothing
but I turn them still.
Have I not spoken of tears
subtle parentheses of blame,
brine outlines punctuated,
thinly silked, easily taken
for wing-laced salt maps,
tongue lick sighs grown
weary with enunciating.
Nightly misspoken the wine
flagons are tossed down.
Pleading echoes the tents
are packed. Forgiving camels,
commas nailed to each hoof,
tread into cool unread darkness
with all that is within it -
a history of wax seals,
once important names,
broken pledges, lies still smooth,
their nuance-scripted smiles crisp,
as predictable as riffled pages
intent on cool gain upon
desert's shifting floor.
Oasis and cloaca,
love birds parched,
now moves caravansary
toward Heart's always
edited horizons.
There are many redactions
before the sun rises.
Perhaps my name goes
before me, my 'press',
Empress of Contrails,
peacocks, accountants
in tow trailing tallies,
unsettled scores,
arrivals, departures,
ejaculations, rejections,
all faces hands have held
and, yearning beyond possibility,
hesitant dawn's mourning doves.
Men cry for my return yet burns
no desert impervious to heat of
all kinds, even human, excepting
the heart, its capacities to startle.
Its dunes in vast stretches beat,
beat for what moonlight cannot
index but only suggest.
Their secrets ride East
as many as there are
desert grains, confessions'
cyphers uselessly written,
recoiling from pathetic,
endless recounting of causes -
neglect, curses, justifications,
worst cases all, just 'tent talk' to
scorpions scribbling in silver shadows,
pitying serpents smug in their ability
to recite every skin they have shed
without regret unlike the men in veils.
For them profane winds,
lightly perfumed, do their
work of erasure well,
absolving memory.
What lies ahead shuffles in
cursives of sound confusing
the ear, a solitary traveler
compulsive for solar winds,
tumbles it's own way.
I feel no pressure for accuracy
nor to lose plume and ink
hiding what cannot be unwritten.
A trail of brocaded skulls in time
returns to sand. One cannot see
this hand waving its goodbyes,
the other concealing tint and quill.
I have written upon human vellum
through ages, through cycles unending
and same doing what heart heat bids
though I also write, perhaps best, upon
darkness, eyes closed, tent flap opened
to all thirsters who may, supplicant,
come wandering in.
The problem of Job in all its ramifications had likewise been
foreshadowed in a dream. It started with my paying a visit to my
long-deceased father. He was living in the country I did not
know where. I saw a house in the style of the eighteenth century,
very roomy, with several rather large outbuildings. It had originally
He was, as I soon discovered, not only the custodian but also a distinguished scholar in his own right which he hadnever been in his lifetime. I met him in his study, and, oddly enough, Dr. Y. who was about my age and his son, both psychiatrists, were also present. I do not know whether I hadasked a question or whether ipy father wanted to explain something of his own accord, but in any case he fetched a bigBible down from a shelf, a heavy folio volume like the MerianBible in my library. The Bible my father held was bound inshiny fishskin. He opened it at the Old Testament I guessed that he turned to the Pentateuch and began interpreting a certain passage. He did this so swiftly and so learnedly that I could not follow him. I noted only that what he said betrayed a vast amount of variegated knowledge, the significance of which I dimly apprehended but could not properly judge or grasp. I saw that Dr. Y. understood nothing at all, and his son began to laugh. They thought that my father was going off the deep end and what he said was simply senile prattle. But it was quite clear to me that it was not due to morbid excitement, and that there was nothing silly about what he was saying. On the contrary, his argument was so intelligent and so learned that we in our stupidity simply could not follow it. It dealt with something extremely important which fascinated him. That was why he was speaking with such intensity; his mind was flooded with profound ideas. I was annoyed and thought it was a pity that he had to talk in the presence of three such idiots as we.
The two psychiatrists represented a limited medical point of view which, of course, also infects me as a physician. They represent my shadow first and second editions of the shadow, father and son. Then the scene changed. My father and I were in front of thehouse, facing a kind of shed where, apparently, wood was stacked. We heard loud thumps, as if large chunks of wood were being thrown down or tossed about. I had the impression that at least two workmen must be busy there, but my father indicated to me that the place was haunted. Some sort of poltergeistswere making the racket, evidently.
We then entered the house, and I saw that it had very thick
walls. We climbed a narrow staircase to the second floor. There
a strange sight presented itself: a large hall which was the
exact replica of the divan-i-kaas (council hall) of Sultan Akbar
at Fatehpur Sikri. It was a high, circular room with a gallery
running along the wall, from which four bridges led to a basin
formed the sultan's round seat. From this elevated place he
spoke to his councilors and philosophers, who sat along the
walls in the gallery. The whole was a gigantic mandala. It
corresponded precisely to the real divan-i-kaas.
In the dream I suddenly saw that from the center a steep
flight of stairs ascended to a spot high up on the wall which
no longer corresponded to reality. At the top of the stairs was
a small door, and my father said, "Now I will lead you into the
highest presence." Then he knelt down and touched his forehead
to the floor. I imitated him, likewise kneeling, with great
emotion. For some reason I could not bring my forehead quite
down to the floor there was perhaps a millimeter to spare.
But at least I had made the gesture with him. Suddenly I knew
perhaps my father had told me that that upper door led to a
solitary chamber where lived Uriah, King David's general,
whom David had shamefully betrayed for the sake of his wife
Bathsheba, by commanding his soldiers to abandon Uriah in
the face of the enemy.
I must make a few explanatory remarks concerning this dream.
The initial scene describes how the unconscious task which I
had left to my "father," that is, to the unconscious, was working
out. He was obviously engrossed in the Bible Genesis? and
eager to communicate his insights. The fishskin marks the Bible
My poor father does not succeed in communicating either, for
not only was I forced to speak publicly, and very much to my
detriment, about the ambivalence of the God-image in the Old
Testament; but also, my wife would be taken from me by death.
These were the things that awaited me, hidden in the unconscious.
I had to submit to this fate, and ought really to have touched my
as the dream said, the '^highest presence,'* an expression
Highest, the Absolute. For that reason Hinayana Buddhism
that surpasses its creator by a small but decisive factor."
"The problem of Job in all its ramifications had likewise been
foreshadowed in a dream. It started with my paying a visit to my
long-deceased father. He was living in the country-! did not
know where. I saw a house in the style of the eighteenth century,
very roomy, with several rather large outbuildings. It had
originally been, I learned, an inn at a spa, and it seemed that
many great personages, famous people and princes, had stopped
there. Furthermore, several had died and their sarcophagi were
in a crypt belonging to the house. My father guarded these as
custodian.
He was, as I soon discovered, not only the custodian but
also a distinguished scholar in his own right-which he had
never been in his lifetime. I met him in his study, and, oddly
enough, Dr. Y.-who was about my age-and his son, both
psychiatrists, were also present. I do not know whether I had
asked a question or whether my father wanted to explain something
of his own accord, but in any case he fetched a big
Bible down from a shelf, a heavy folio volume like the Merian
Bible in my library. The Bible my father held was bound in
shiny fishskin. He opened it at the Old Testament-! guessed
217Memories, Dreams, Reflections
that he turned to the Pentateuch-and began interpreting a
certain passage. He did this so swiftly and so learnedly that I
could not follow him. I noted only that what he said betrayed
a vast amount of variegated knowledge, the significance of which
I dimly apprehended but could not properly judge or grasp. I
saw that Dr. Y. understood nothing at all, and his son began to
laugh. They thought that my father was going off the deep end
and what he said was simply senile prattle. But it was quite
clear to me that it was not due to morbid excitement, and that
there was nothing silly about what he was saying. On the con·
trary, his argument was so intelligent and so learned that we
in our stupidity simply could not follow it. It dealt with some·
thing extremely important which fascinated him. That was why
he was speaking with such intensity; his mind was flooded with
profound ideas. I was annoyed and thought it was a pity that
he had to talk in the presence of three such idiots as we.
The two psychiatrists represented a limited medical point of
view which, of course, also infects me as a physician. They
represent my shadow-first and second editions of the shadow,
father and son.
Then the scene changed. My father and I were in front of the
house, facing a kind of shed where, apparently, wood was
stacked. We heard loud thumps, as if large chunks of wood were
being thrown down or tossed about. I had the impression that
at least two workmen must be busy there, but my father indi·
cated to me that the place was haunted. Some sort of poltergeists
were making the racket, evidently.
We then entered the house, and I saw that it had very thick
walls. We climbed a narrow staircase to the second floor. There
a strange sight presented itself: a large hall which was the
exact replica of the divan-i-kaas ( council hall ) of Sultan Akbar
at Fatehpur Sikri. It was a high, circular room with a gallery
running along the wall, from which four bridges led to a basin·
shaped center. The basin rested upon a huge column and
formed the sultan's round seat. From this elevated place he
spoke to his councilors and philosophers, who sat along the
walls in the gallery. The whole was a gigantic mandala. It
corresponded precisely to the real divan+kaas.
In the dream I suddenly saw that from the center a steep
flight of stairs ascended to a spot high up on the wall-which
no longer corresponded to reality. At the top of the stairs was
a small door, and my father said, "Now I will lead you into the
highest presence." Then he knelt down and touched his forehead
to the floor. I imitated him, likewise kneeling, with great
emotion. For some reason I could not bring my forehead quite
down to the floor-there was perhaps a millimeter to spare.
But at least I had made the gesture with him. Suddenly I knew
-perhaps my father had told me-that that upper door led to a
solitary chamber where lived Uriah, King David's general,
whom David had shamefully betrayed for the sake of his wife
Bathsheba, by commanding his soldiers to abandon Uriah in
the face of the enemy.
I must make a few explanatory remarks concerning this dream.
The initial scene describes how the unconscious task which I
had left to my "father," that is, to the unconscious, was working
out. He was obviously engrossed in the Bible-Genesis?-and
eager to communicate his insights. The fishskin marks the
Bible as an unconscious content, for fishes are mute and unconscious.
My poor father does not succeed in communicating
either, for the audience is in part incapable of understanding, in
part maliciously stupid
After this defeat we cross the street to the "other side," where
poltergeists are at work. Poltergeist phenomena usually take
place in the vicinity of young people before puberty; that is to
say, I am still immature and too unconscious. The Indian
ambience illustrates the "other side." \Vhen I was in India, the
mandala structure of the divan-i-kaas had in actual fact powerfully
impressed me as the representation of a content related to
a center. The center is the seat of Akbar the Great, who rules
over a subcontinent, who is a "lord of this world," like David.
But even higher than David stands his guiltless victim, his loyal
general Uriah, whom he abandoned to the enemy. Uriah is a
prefiguration of Christ, the god-man who was abandoned by
God. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" On top
of that, David had "taken unto himself' Uriah's wife. Only
later did I understand what this allusion to Uriah signified:
not only was I forced to speak publicly, and very much to my
detriment, about the ambivalence of the God-image in the Old
Testament; but also, my wife would be taken from me by death.
These were the things that awaited me, hidden in the unconscious.
I had to submit to this fate, and ought really to have
touched my forehead to the floor, so that my submission would
be complete. But something prevented me from doing so entirely,
and kept me just a millimeter away. Something in me was
saying, "All very well, but not entirely." Something in me was
defiant and determined not to be a dumb fish: and if there
were not something of the sort in free men, no Book of Job would
have been written several hundred years before the birth of
Christ. Man always has some mental reservation, even in the
face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom?
And what would be the usc of that freedom if it could not
,threaten Him who threatens it?
Uriah, then, lives in a higher place than Akbar. He is even,
as the dream said, the "highest presence," an expression which
properly is used only of God, unless we arc dealing in Byzantinisms.
I cannot help thinking here of the Buddha and his relationship
to the gods. For the devout Asiatic, the Tathagata is the AllHighest,
the Absolute. For that reason Hinayana Buddhism has
been suspected of atheism-very wrongly so. By virtue of the
power of the gods man is enabled to gain an insight into his
Creator. He has even been given the power to annihilate Creation
in its essential aspect, that is, man's consciousness of the
world. Today he can extinguish all higher life on earth by radioactivity.
The idea of world annihilation is already suggested by
the Buddha: by means of enlightenment the Nidana chainthe
chain of causality which leads inevitably to old age, sickness,
and death-can be broken, so that the illusion of Being comes
to an end. Schopcnhauer's negation of the Will points prophetically
to a problem of the future that has already come thrcatingly
close. The dream discloses a thought and a premonition
that have long been present in humanity: the idea of the creature
that surpasses its creator by a small but decisive factor."
**
You may read the autobiography free online at this link:
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