This lack of parallelism is not just accidental or purposeless,
Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
Experience in analytical psychology has amply shown that the conscious and the unconscious seldom agree as to their contents and their tendencies.
This lack of parallelism is not just accidental or purposeless, but is due to the fact that the unconscious behaves in a compensatory or complementary manner towards the conscious.
We can also put it the other way round and say that the conscious behaves in a complementary manner towards the unconscious.
The reasons for this relationship are:
(1) Consciousness possesses a threshold intensity which its contents must have attained, so that all elements that are too weak remain in the unconscious.
(2) Consciousness, because of its directed functions, exercises an inhibition (which Freud calls censorship) on all incompatible material, with the result that it sinks into the unconscious.
(3) Consciousness constitutes the momentary process of adaptation,” whereas the unconscious contains not only all the forgotten material of the individual’s own past, but all the inherited behaviour traces constituting the structure of the mind.
(4) The unconscious contains all the fantasy combinations which have not yet attained the threshold intensity, but which in the course of time and under suitable conditions will enter the light of consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 232
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
Toni Wolff: the only purpose in people’s attitude is to recognize
Miss Wolff: In a measure, the only purpose in people’s attitude is to recognize, to reach the meaning. Then that is a purpose of life.
Prof Jung: Well, I would say that either awareness, or sense, or mind, or intellect, or spirit in a metaphysical sense-always try to persuade us that, by their results or their statements, the ultimate truth could be established-and that that would be the meaning of life altogether.
For instance, the scientific intellect makes it a purpose of its existence to establish a truth, as if that were the real goal of life; and as mentality could be made the goal of life, so another function can make another goal, create another meaning of life, and try to persuade us that that is the only thing.
You see, when functions are differentiated in a one-sided way, when you are always living on one function, then that function gets the better of you and insists that the whole meaning of life is nothing but that.
But if you know that you are not identical with a function-if you are the subject of your functions, not the object-then you can say, my goal is so and so, and the function is subservient.
That is what Nietzsche wants to bring about.
Naturally, if you are identical with one function, that function tries to persuade you that its data, its realities, are the meaning of your life.
Therefore, you should see that you are the master of your functions, that you are the subject of your functions, and not the object. ~Zarathustra Seminar, 386-387
Carl Jung: The purpose of nearly all rebirth rites is to unite the above with the below.
To Johanna Michaelis
Dear Frau Michaelis, 20 January 1939
Your questions are not easy to answer.
Your conjecture that ancient Egyptian psychology was somehow fundamentally different from ours is probably right.
Those millennia had indeed quite different problems.
On one side a torpid impersonal unconsciousness reigned, on the other a revealed consciousness, or a consciousness inspired from within and hence derived directly from the gods, personified in Pharaoh.
He was the self and the individual of the people.
The spirit still came from above.
The tension between above and below [In Ancient Egypt] was undoubtedly extreme, hence the opposites could be held together only by means of equally rigid forms.
The “duality” of the ruler is based on the primitive belief that the placenta is the brother of the new-born child, which as such often accompanies him throughout life in ghostly fashion, since it dies early and is ceremonially buried.
You can find detailed descriptions of this in Levy-Bruhl’s Le Surnaturel et la nature dans la mentalite primitive.
The ka is probably a descendant of the placenta.
White and red are sacred colours in India too, for instance the temple walls are painted with white and red stripes.
What they mean is not clear to me.
Your interpretation as light and blood is extremely probable but one should have historical proofs.
The tension between above and below in ancient Egypt is in my opinion the real source of the Near Eastern saviour figures, whose patriarch is Osiris.
He is also the source of the idea of an individual (immortal) soul. (“The Osiris of N. N.”)
The purpose of nearly all rebirth rites is to unite the above with the below.
The baptism in the Jordan is an eloquent example: water below, Holy Ghost above.
On the primitive level the totemistic rite of renewal is always a reversion to the half animal, half human condition of prehistoric times.
Hence the frequent use of animal skins and other animal attributes.
Evidence of this may be found in the cave paintings discovered in the south of France.
Among these customs we must also reckon the demotion of high to low.
In Christianity the washing of the disciples’ feet, in ancient Egypt the birth from an animal’s skin.
Hence twice a year in India, even today, the Maharajah of Travancore, with torso bared and bare feet, must accompany the god to the bathing place with his whole court.
As a further parallel there are the Shrovetide customs of the medieval Church, when the youngest lay brother took the abbot’s seat and was waited upon by the older monks.
Modern student initiations!
Also the ritual mockery of sacred customs, the Fools’ Mass in medieval monasteries.
Among the Pueblo Indians the “delight makers” (see The Delight Makers by Adolf F. Bandelier).
It is very probable that as long as seriously observed rites exist which unite the polar opposites the balance in the life of a people will be preserved.
Hence, in China, Tao rests upon the harmonious cooperation of heaven and earth.
But as you can see from the I Ching, heaven sometimes separates from the earth, thus producing a disorderly and unfavourable state of affairs.
There are very many parallels to these questions you have touched upon, particularly to the baptismal customs, but I cannot possibly mention them all.
As regards the four royal standards I would only remark that, if I remember rightly, a placenta was carried along with them.
There is a monograph on this, but unfortunately I cannot remember its title.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 259-261