The attack followed just as if he had seen the flame.
Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
There are, as we know, certain views which would restrict everything psychic to consciousness, as being identical with it.
I do not believe this is sufficient.
If we assume that there is anything at all beyond our sense-perception, then we are entitled to speak of psychic elements whose existence is only indirectly accessible to us.
For anybody acquainted with the psychology of hypnotism and somnambulism, it is a well-known fact that though an artificially or morbidly restricted consciousness of this kind does not contain certain ideas, it nevertheless behaves exactly as if it did. For instance, there was an hysterically deaf patient who was fond of singing.
One day the doctor unobtrusively sat down at the piano and accompanied the next verse in another key, whereupon the patient went on singing in the new key. Another patient always fell into “hystero-epileptic” convulsions at the sight of a naked flame.
He had a markedly restricted field of vision, that is, he suffered from peripheral blindness (having what is known as a “tubular” field of vision).
If one now held a lighted match in the blind zone, the attack followed just as if he had seen the flame.
In the symptomatology of such states there are innumerable cases of this kind, where with the best will in the world one can only say that these people perceive, think, feel, remember, decide, and act unconsciously, doing unconsciously what others do consciously.
These processes occur regardless of whether consciousness registers them or not. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 295
Buddha in the Flames
A statue of the Buddha from Sarnath, 4th century CE
Although I am not the son of the God myself I represent him nevertheless as one who was a mother to the God, and one there-fore to whom in the name of the God the freedom of the binding and loosing has been given.
The binding and loosing take place in me.
But insofar as it takes place in me, and I am a part of the world, it also takes place through me in the world, and no one can hinder it.
It doesn’t take place according to the way of my will but in the way of unavoidable effect.
I am not master over you, but the being of the God in me.
I lock the past with one key; with the other I open the future.
This takes place through my transformation.
The miracle of transformation commands.
I am its servant,just as the Pope is.
You see how incredible it was to believe such of oneself.
It applies not to me, but to the symbol.
The symbol becomes my lord and unfailing commander.
It will fortify its reign and change itself
into a·starry and riddling image, whose meaning turns completely inward, and whose pleasure radiates outward like blazing fire, like a Buddha in the flames.
Because I sink into my symbol to such an extent, the symbol changes me from my one into my other, and that cruel Goddess of my interior, my womanly pleasure, my own other, the tormented tormentor, that which is to be tormented.
I have interpreted these images, as best I can, with poor words. ~The Red Book, Page 250
God to be born in the flame of man’s consciousness, leaping ever higher.
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950 (Vol 1)
[Excerpt from Letter Carl Jung to Walter Robert Corti.]
That you ”live for God” is perhaps the healthiest thing about you—“He that is near me is near the fire,” so runs a Gnostic saying of the Lord.
But where God is nearest the danger is greatest.
God to be born in the flame of man’s consciousness, leaping ever higher.
And what if this has no roots in the earth?
lf it is not a house of stone where the fire of God can dwell, but a wretched straw hut that flares up and vanishes?
Could God then be born?
One must to suffer God.
That is the supreme task for the carrier of He must be the advocate of the earth.
God will take care of himself.
My inner principle is: Deus et homo.
God needs man in to become conscious, just as he needs limitation in time and space.
Let us therefore be for him limitation in time and space an earthly tabernacle.
Jesus-Mani-Buddha-Lao-tse are for me the four pillars of the temple of the spirit.
I could give none preference over the other.
Sometime I will show you some Manichean Turfan frescoes.
•
Next Saturday, l shall be at my country seat, a tower by the Upper Lake, halfway between Bollingen and Schmerikon.
You can come to see me there.
With best regards,
Dr. C.G. Jung.
[Carl Jung; Excerpt Letter to Walter Robert Corti, Volume 1, Page 65.]
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
