11 November 1931 Visions Seminar  Lecture I

11 November 1931 Visions Seminar  Lecture I

Visions Seminar

11 November 1931 Visions Seminar  Lecture I

Dr. Jung:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am curious to know whether you can remember anything of the last seminar, so you will permit me to ask you a few questions.

What is the actual situation of our patient now?

Dr. Barker: She has accepted the earth side of her nature and realized that fruits and flowers may come out of it.

Dr: Jung: How was that expressed? What was the picture?

Dr: Barker: The Negro with the blood flowing from his side.

Dr: Jung: And what is the analogy?

Dr: Barker: The Redemption through Christ.

Dr: Jung: Yes, it is a resuscitation of Christian mythology, but the figure of Christ is expressed here by the so-called black Messiah.

That refers to a remark I made rather lightly in a former seminar, that nothing would hinder the unconscious from producing a black Messiah.

Here it comes true.

It is a Negro, and the blood flowing from his side is analogous to the Christian symbolism, but here with a typically different meaning.

Do you remember what the blood meant in this case? Again a Christian analogy.

Mrs. Crowley: The wine of the Communion.

Dr: Jung: It is the wine, but how does it differ from the Christian mystery?

Not the meaning current in early Christianity, which was of course quite different from the later interpretation, but the meaning of the wine in modern Christianity.

Mrs. Crowley: Is it not the spirit?

Dr: Jung: Not exactly. In our modern Christianity the wine means the blood, and here the blood means the wine, just the reverse.

Mrs. Sawyer: This is more the Dionysian wine.

Dr: Jung: Exactly, it is really the wine.

There is a change of accent; the emphasis is laid upon something quite different, there is a peculiar

transformation of the symbolism of the Communion.

In the Christian Communion the wine means the blood.

Here the blood gushing from the side of the Negro means the wine.

The difference lies just in the difference between the religious ideas of the two cults.

In the cult of Dionysus the blood is the wine; in the Christian cult the wine is the blood.

The blood in the cult of Dionysus is really the blood, the juice of the earth, the blood of the Great Mother, and then it becomes the wine, and the wine in itself is the concrete sacred object.

But in the Christian cult-in modern times, not in ancient times-the wine means the blood.

Is the blood, then, concrete?

Mrs. Sigg: No, the blood is made into an abstraction.

Dr. Jung: Yes, the Christian idea abstracts or spiritualizes substance into spirit; the wine, meaning the blood, is something abstract because that blood is not real, in spite of the dogma of transubstantiation, which still exists in the Lutheran as well as in the Catholic church.

It is only said to be real, but actually it most decidedly is not; for if one drinks that wine, or eats the Host, one will not taste real blood or real flesh.

It is an assertion of spiritual reality over and above the concrete reality, which one finds also in many primitive cults: in the totemic cults, for instance, where they eat the totem animal once every year.

It is eaten at the totemic meal, and it is one and the same animal or bird that is eaten in every village of the tribe.

If there are twenty-five villages, and in each a totem bird is killed, there are of course twenty-five different birds; but no, it is supposed to be the same bird.

Just as there is only one Santa Claus, yet in every town there are several hundred; in our children’s fantasy Santa Claus is not a plurality, he is one and the same everywhere.

This is the assertion of the spiritual reality over and above the facts.

The tendency of the Christian dogma is to deny the substantial quality of the wine; they assert that it is not wine, it is blood, yet the blood is a spiritual factor.

But it is just the contrary in the Dionysian cult.

There the blood, which is supposed to be the blood of the Great Mother, appears in the concrete form of the wine, it is the wine itself; the wine is not a spiritual fact, it is a concrete fact which contains the spirit.

Mr. Baumann: Does the discussion between Zwingli and Luther refer to this subject?

Dr. Jung: Yes, that famous discussion about “it is” or “it means.”

The Lutheran church made a number of concessions to the Catholic church. The church itself is a concession.

At the time of the Reformation they made an attempt to obliterate it altogether, but they found it impossible

because the existence of the church is so bound up with tradition, so much a part of humanity, that they could not give up the idea of a church-Luther less than Zwingli.

Luther had to cling to the means of grace propounded by the church, which means that one cannot be redeemed

without the grace of Communion, and Communion can only be given by the priest-by the church.

So it had to be the blood and the flesh, it had to be transubstantiation.

But Zwingli had a different point of view; he was a Humanist and a very rational man, so he saw further along the road.

He said it meant a sort of recollection, a symbolical memory, or an allegory representing the meaning of the meal which Christ celebrated with his disciples just before his end.

And curiously enough, this point of view is exactly the same as that of Origen, an early Christian writer who was regarded as a heretic; he was a Greek who lived in about the middle of the second century.

Now in the vision we were discussing at the end of the last seminar, the religious ideas of the patient return in a very interesting fashion to a pre-Christian point of view.

How is it that she goes back to that standpoint?

How does it fit in with the series of visions? We must reconstruct her attitude.

Mrs. Crowley: From the medieval attitude of mind, she went back to paganism.

Dr. Jung: You are right.

From the modern point of view, her visions went back through the ages in very rapid succession into the Christian

Middle Ages, and then down past the temples of the Romans and the Greeks to the borderline of the animal kingdom, where her last vision was the eyes of the animal, really the soul of the animal.

And then she began to ascend again.

She started with sun worship, but this time with a complete understanding born of a vital experience, of what those cults had meant.

Of course, besides the experience she had gained, her point of view in regard to it was that of modern man, of what those things, as they were done in the remote past, would mean to one now.

For it was not an antique person but a modern person who was experiencing the things which once had been.

And why should she take that particular way?

Dr. Barker: She has to reestablish her roots.

Dr. Jung: Yes, you might say she was reestablishing her roots.

It is as if, in the late Christian era, she had reached a sphere which contained no more life, and now she has to look for the springs of life, or the roots from which new shoots might rise.

She is experiencing from the very beginning what man experienced in the remote ages, with the purpose of developing from those roots a new and living tree in a form that would fit the present time, a form in which she could continue to live.

For she could not go on any longer in the old form; that became more or less obsolete.

She is now in the time of early Christianity, when the transition from the Dionysian cult to the Christian ideals took place.

But she is going through this transformation backwards, not forward from Dionysus to Christianity, but back from Christianity to Dionysus, and she is trying to develop something new out of the Dionysian ideas.

It is as if there were two figures in the past, Dionysus and Christ, representing two different principles.

The Dionysian was decidedly an archaic principle, and Christ was the new opponent of that.

The sense of this was so vivid in those days that one of the early Fathers, Justinus Martyrus, a Greek who lived in the latter part of the second century, said that the legend of Dionysus was a diabolical invention to prevent Christ from giving the world his message.

He said that in the eighth or ninth century before the birth of Christ, the devil got a hunch that God would one day send his son to redeem mankind, and by all means he had to prevent it.

Therefore he taught the people the legend of Dionysus, which was so closely analogous to that of Christ that when Christ really came into the world, the heathens would say, “Oh that is an old story,” and pay no attention to it.

It needed such an argument in those days to make people know what Christ really meant.

For there was the idea that Christ was identical with Bacchus; there is an inscription where Jesus is called Bacchus.

And I have told you of that famous Damascus goblet where Jesus was represented sitting, or almost suspended, in the branches of a big grapevine, looking exactly like Dionysus.

3 That shows how much in those days the wine was the blood.

Christ stood at the turning point where the Dionysian ideas, which really ruled the whole of antiquity, were changing over into an abstract idea.

And now we see our patient at exactly the same spot, but in the reverse order.

It is as if she were descending from the Christian abstraction to Dionysian concreteness, the blood changing into wine, and the wine becoming sacred. Here I may mention something personal.

At this point, she discovered the meaning of wine in reality and became a great connoisseur of good wine.

Americans hardly ever notice that wine has individuality; it is just hock, or claret, or champagne, and nothing more,

which is an exceedingly barbarous assumption.

Wine has soul, wine is something living, and it is spiritual. To her that was a great discovery, and the spiritual effect that good wine could have was a discovery too.

I am not trying to persuade you to become alcoholics, but there really is something special about wine.

I will not say so much about hard liquor, nor will I say too much about beer, but wine has a specific mana.

One cannot prove it scientifically, but ask a connoisseur of wine and he will tell you an interesting story if he is at all articulate; it is well worthwhile to be a connoisseur of wine.

And this woman began to realize this at just the time when she had these visions; it then became a personal experience to her.

Another point in the vision is that it is not only blood that pours forth from the Negro; he is offering flowers and the fruits of the earth.

I will show you the picture again [see plate 17]. What is the meaning of the fruit?

Mrs. Fierz: Is that not another analogy? Here is the fruit and the wine, and in the Christian symbolism we have the bread and the wine.

Dr. Jung: It is a close analogy, yet there is a slight difference, a point which should not be omitted.

The blood is wine, yet it is blood that pours out of the body in the picture, and in the cult of Dionysus the real

blood played a very great role.

They celebrated what they called the raw-meat feasts: they ate the living flesh in their orgiastic ceremonials, and

they also drank real blood, which of course derives from still earlier cults, where it really was a bloody sacrifice.

The blood sacrifice was substituted in the course of time by vegetables as offerings.

So instead of blood the wine, and instead of flesh the bread, both derived from vegetables.

Now here it is fruit instead of bread.

What is the difference between fruit and bread?-for bread is wheat and that could also be called fruit.

Miss Taylor: Fruit is the natural product, not the product of man.

Dr. Jung: Yes, fruit is as it grows in its original form, absolutely unadulterated, not tampered with by man; while bread is the dried seed of wheat, ground and baked, passed through a sort of mechanical process.

And what is the meaning of that psychologically?

Remark: Fruit would symbolize the immediate expression of nature in man.

Dr. Jung: Yes, with nothing changed or refined.

But blood is an exception: the blood is the wine, and wine is a changed product.

It is a fermented juice that has undergone a certain procedure, though not so much as bread.

Then I want to remind you of one thing more.

The Negro says at the end of the vision: “Now you are wedded to me,” and he repeats the phrase, which obviously means that she is now united with the new savior, that strange Dionysian spirit.

And if she is really united with him, that spirit will be a sort of instigator within her, it will continue to work, it will lead her on a particular path through life.

Without that spirit she would envisage the problems of her life from the late Christian point of view, that sapless, almost sad, dusty point of view which made her neurotic before.

But now she has that other form which is far from being sapless, which has an abandon, a spirit of abundance, which will influence her very strangely.

She will be confronted with the most amazing problems on her way, so we may expect that in the next visions we shall come across serious obstacles which will hinder her from continuing on the road with the black Dionysus.

Now we will continue.

I think you have a certain picture of the patient’s situation.

The next vision begins:

I beheld a black stallion. With his hoofs he struck fire from the rocks. I was in the sea and I called to the stallion asking how I could mount him. The stallion came down to the water’s edge and I mounted upon his back.

What about this black stallion?

&mark: It is the animal of the devil.

Dr: Jung: Yes, according to medieval psychology the devil rides on a black stallion.

It is black like hell, and black stallions are said to be particularly ill tempered or nervous.

In Plato’s famous simile, man is compared to a charioteer who has to guide two horses; one is a white, docile, pious horse, and the other is black, disobedient, obstinate, rebellious, and so on.

This is obviously the evil horse, because for ages past black stallions have been understood to be bad, not only on account of the color, but because they really are very evil tempered and dangerous.

So what does it mean here?

Mr: Allemann: It is the force of nature in her.

Dr: Jung: But why a male? Why not a female?

Mrs. Crowley: It is an animal animus I suppose.

Dr: Jung: Yes, it is the animus force.

We dealt with that question in the last meeting of the Psychologischer Club, when Dr. Reichstein gave us a

lecture about alchemy.

He said that the spirit is always female in alchemy, while the animus is male.

It is true that in the secret cults, the spirit was often supposed to be a female, which comes from the fact that those cults were masculine functions, and to men the unconscious spirit is female, it is the anima.

But for a woman the unconscious is represented by a male, in this case by a black stallion.

Now the unconscious libido, the psychical energy, ought to be indifferent, it should not be expressed by an animal with such a strong sexual character as a black stallion.

At what is her unconscious libido hinting in taking that form?

Mrs. Fierz: Is she not possessed?

Dr. Jung: Yes, it means that the animus is in possession of her libido, he is identical with it, he is the black stallion.

Yet her unconscious libido is really something indifferent, it is merely energy, so it might just as well have a feminine form since it belongs to her.

But no, it belongs to the animus.

So her vision makes her acquainted with the fact that the thing which is now going to carry her is by no means herself but her animus.

Do you think that is right or wrong?

Mrs. Crowley: It seems like a natural reaction after that whole ceremonial.

Dr. Jung: But the question is whether it is dangerous or wrong.

The natural course of events may sometimes be most unfavorable.

How would you take it if such a thing happened to you? For instance, if it came to me, I would say: “Well, it is my own life and of course I must accept it. ”

Just as, if l have an artistic interest, I accept it; since I have that particular interest it goes in with the rest, I can easily assimilate it.

But

if a black mare comes along, I am not so certain whether she belongs

to me.

Mrs. Crowley: But if it is already in you?

Dr. Jung: I hope not! I am not at all sure whether I could accept it.

You

must put yourself in the place of that woman.

Suppose in reality you were confronted with a black stallion. You would not be in the least sure that it was yourself.

You see, the general prejudice is that it is herself, but it is not. So it is quite possible that strange things come to her, that a psychological non-ego manifests in her.

That black stallion is something that does not belong to her, and it makes all the difference in the world whether she assumes that it is her personal psychology.

Mrs. Crowley: But only by recognizing it can she really become acquainted with it, and by that means have the power of exorcising it.

Dr. Jung: It is there, but the question is, what her attitude to it shall be.

Shall she identify with it, shall she accept it, shall she say it is herself?

Miss Taylor: She must do what she did; she tried to drive it.

Dr. Jung: Was that right or wrong?

Miss Taylor: Right.

Dr. Jung: Suppose the devil offered you a black horse, would you ride it?

Miss Taylor: One could try for a bit.

Dr. Jung: Well, it is really quite a problem.

The fact here is that she is suddenly confronted with a strange masculine libido, something that is most decidedly not herself.

Moreover a black stallion is supposed to be a demoniacal being, so how can she trust herself to it?

Remark: Could she not control it?

Dr. Jung: Why should she control it?

Do you feel the need to control all

the wild elephants of Africa that you may encounter?

There are many things in the world which I cannot control.

Mrs. Baynes: But she was in the sea, and it would be very desirable to get out of the sea.

Dr. Jung: There you are! This horse comes as a sort of rescuer, and that is the only means by which she can get away.

In such a case one would ride away on a tortoise or on the devil if he presented himself.

But why is she in the sea?

Mrs. Sigg: It means that she is unconscious.

Dr. Jung: Naturally, but how did she get there?

You remember in the last vision she ascended from the underground cave to the surface of the earth, and now she is in the sea.

She is suddenly in the unconscious.

What could have happened after her acquaintance with the Negro savior?

You remember he said twice: “Now I am wedded to you.”

He emphasized it strongly. She cannot get away from the fact that she is wedded to that savior.

And what would be the possible consequence?

Dr. Meier: That she is possessed by him, she would follow him.

Mr. Maylan: She would lose herself.

Dr. Jung: Yes, she would become unconscious like that primitive Negro who was in a state of ecstasy, of abandon.

That is what has happened between this vision and the one before, and therefore she is in the sea; she winds up in an unconscious condition.

Now this is exactly what one usually observes in such a psychological situation.

If a person follows the Dionysian spirit of abandon he will get drunk, for instance, beyond any reasonable proportions, until he is unconscious; and then something seems to come and pull him out.

Moreover, being in the sea means being below the level of the land, being in too low a condition, in other words.

He should be lifted up to a higher condition, and to do that, nothing is better than the instinctive force.

Very often when we are in an unconscious state our will fails us, we cannot employ our will power, and then something must give us the necessary kick to get us out of the unconscious.

Here the instinct is represented by the stallion; this woman’s only way out of that condition is by getting on the back of the horse.

You see the close connection between the black horse and the Negro; it is the same blackness and it is practically the same idea.

So the thing which has brought her down into the unconscious is also the thing which lifts her out of it.

That is a very paradoxical statement, but it is a piece of the most ancient wisdom of the East.

Therefore the saying: The man who falls upon the earth will-in getting up-be supported by the earth.

The thing which makes one fall is also the thing which makes one rise.

So the Negro brings her down into the unconscious, and the black stallion lifts her up again out of that blackness.

Now the fantasy continues:

We galloped for a long way. At last we came to a great giant who stood across our path.  The stallion melted away into the ground and I was left alone facing the giant. “Who are you, oh giant?” I asked him. He answered: “I am the voice of the world.” His teeth were long and from his mouth issued fire. I tried to pass him but could not.

Who is this giant?

Mrs. Fierz: Is he not the same giant who appeared when she said, “I don’t fear you, oh world”?

Dr. Jung: Yes, we have encountered him before. You remember the picture [ see plate 2 8 J.

The voice of the world, public opinion, is again inher path, the gigantic human being that represents society.

Mrs. Sawyer: I thought you said it meant the past, that she tried to carry the whole past.

Dr. Jung: I did say that, as our human society, all our functions, theopinion publique, is the result of the past; therefore it is gigantic.

Everything old is big.

The new things are exceedingly small and weak andtender. So she is up against a great power.

The giant represents the opinion publique of her whole world, the convictions of our present society.

And there the stallion melts away.

Now why should that libido disappear just in the moment when she needed it?

It seems most regrettable that she should be left high and dry by the instinctive power which carried her.

Why should such a tremendously strong and vital animal suddenly collapse completely?

Mrs. Fierz: Is it that she drops back into her old attitude?

Dr. Jung: You think this is really a regression? Then we must explain why she draws back.

Mrs. Fierz: Fear.

Dr. Jung: Yes, but what happens to this black stallion, to this battle animal, that he should suddenly be overcome and fade away?

A stallion is very courageous.

Mrs. Baynes: Could it not be a challenge to her to become conscious, and to make a bridge between the two?

Dr. Jung: Exactly, but that won’t explain the vanishing of the stallion.

Miss Hannah: Is it because she is unable to hold the two opposites in her ego mind at the same moment?

I mean, do her instincts leave her because she is forced to be fully aware of public opinion?-the animus,that is?

Dr. Jung: No, she is very well aware of both of those.

Mrs. Fierz: Is it that the stallion is an animus opinion?

Dr. Jung: Of course.

That is why I said that the animus opinion of the world was in the way.

And that is why the stallion vanishes when he, alsoan animus opinion, faces the world; it is because he is identical with that opinion.

You see an animus horse is libido which is in a certain opinionated animus form, and that is at the same time public opinion.

Animus opinion is always public opinion, a universal opinion.

Therefore I asked you if you would mount that horse right away.

It would be a bit dangerous, but it was necessary.

The point is that she got into the unconscious following the black savior.

That was not so bad-it had to be-but she had to get out of the hole again, and the thing that helps her out of the hole is public opinion.

For public opinion says that what one does in the sea is all wrong.

It says: “Now be a man, don’t degenerate, be morally responsible”-a very general slogan-and on the back of that slogan she comes to land again.

Then, possessed by that beautiful horse, she goes further, when suddenly she is absolutely overwhelmed by public

opinion, by the very thing which has carried her up from the unconscious.

She cannot continue because she was brought up to this present point on the back of the animus horse which was an opinion.

And this giant is an opinion too, giant and stallion are made of the same stuff.

That is why the stallion disappears, leaving her high and dry with the giant. Now what can she do with him?

The great obstacle in her way is, I repeat, the public opinion which functions in her own psychology as an animus opinion, and the stallion vanishes before the giant public opinion because he himself is the energy of that opinion.

Now public opinion, conventional morality, conventional ideas, are naturally very helpful.

They would not be in existence if they were not good for something; for everybody who is down below, in the sea, such ideas are exceedingly useful.

But if you go on for too long, you will find yourself completely deserted in the end because your unconscious libido vanishes.

You cannot force yourself beyond a certain point.

You can only follow that kind of psychology as long as you live within the boundary line of the conventional point of view.

If you try the individual path, you will be left by that collective libido, because you can only trust yourself to the conventional standard as long as you are below the fiction of the normal man.

If you try to go beyond, you are up against the giant, and the horse vanishes, it simply leaves you; you are

deserted by what one would call the collective instinct.

Then an entirely new problem arises: what can help you when even your instincts leave you?

When you are carried by the instincts, things are comparatively smooth, life is easy, you sail along; you make many

mistakes but they matter very little because you are together with your instincts and you remain more or less unconscious.

But what will help you when you are up against the giant public opinion?-when your instinct collapses and transforms into fear, for instance? What will carry you further?

There is no “thou shalt,” there is no admonition, and nobody will give you support because it is not a collective matter.

When you go further it is entirely an individual enterprise.

Mrs. Sigg: To do just one’s own little individual duty.

Dr. Jung: Yes, but what will help you to do that?

Mrs. Crowley: Consciousness.

Dr. Jung: Oh, consciousness is tremendously inefficient.

Dr. Reichstein: The Self.

Dr. Jung: Now who is for the Self?

Mrs. Crowley: That is what I meant by consciousness.

Dr. Jung: They are not identical.

Mrs. Crowley: The consciousness of herself.

Dr. Jung: The consciousness of oneself is not identical, and moreover, it is peculiarly inefficient.

The ego is very inefficient if it is not carried by the instincts or by collective powers; you know how feeble it is.

Therefore we need a source of support that derives from elsewhere, if there is any.

Dr. Reichstein holds that it must be the Self.

Miss Taylor: The help from within.

Dr. Jung: I will let the fantasy answer and you will see whether Dr. Reichstein is justified or not.

When she found herself unable to pass the giant, she said: “Beyond him I saw a white city. I said to him again: ‘I

must pass you’, but he only laughed.”

Now what is that white city? What does such a glimpse ahead mean psychologically?

Mrs. Sigg: Encouragement.

Dr. Jung: Yes, hope ahead; it is as if she were seeing something that would follow when she had overcome the obstacle.

It is a promise, and therefore it is a white city, the city of promise. Do you recognize it?

Miss Taylor: The new Jerusalem.

Dr. Jung: It is the heavenly Jerusalem, but there is another example.

Christianity doesn’t cover the whole world; there are religions which are greater than Christianity in numbers and perhaps also in ideas-Brahmanism, for instance.

The city of Brahma is the highest city in the world, it is a huge city upon the Himalayas.

I think it is made of diamonds-something gleaming white-and it is on a mountain whose sides are supported by four other mountains.

Mrs. Schlegel: It is a symbol of individuation.

Dr. Jung: Yes, it is the center that is above this center here, it is the highest center on top of the mountain.

The white celestial city conveys the idea of the goal, the final, definite and complete condition.

Miss Wolff It is again a collective symbol, not an individual or isolated thing. One might suppose the refuge would be something for oneself only, but it is again something which is there for everyone.

Dr. Jung: Exactly, but we must look at it first from the standpoint of its belonging to her exclusively, because she does not know yet that the thing which seems to belong to herself alone is the most collective of all.

That idea comes very much later.

The first realization is of the innermost thing, the absolutely unique thing which belongs only to oneself.

That this is also collective is a tremendous paradox.

Miss Wolff We cannot get round it because it is collective.

Dr. Jung: Yes, but we can say, in order to mitigate the paradox, that in speaking of it we make it collective inasmuch as it is a word, inasmuch as it is a fact we can never make it collective.

This is a bit difficult, so we had better remain at present with the symbolical or metaphorical formula of the thing that she sees beyond, which is the idea of the heavenly Jerusalem.

Do you know the outlines of that celestial city?

Mrs. Fierz: Is it not a mandala?

Dr. Jung: Can you prove it?

Mrs. Crowley: There were the four rivers.

Dr. Jung: Is there an English Bible here?

We must read the Bible or we shall not understand psychology.

Our psychology, our whole lives, our

language and imagery, are built upon the Bible.

Again and again one comes across it in the unconscious of people who know practically nothing of it, yet these metaphors are in their dreams because they are in our blood.

Now I will read you some news:

And I,John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

(The mandala is a yoni, female, so it is here a bride.)

And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel; On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he that talked with me had a golden reed to  measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measurements of a man, that is, of an angel. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of

one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

You see that is a most beautiful mandala, the foursquare symbol, the four corners; it is a square like the cloister in the center of the Buddhist mandala.

The mandala is the symbol of individuation, so the white city is the city of individuation.

It is the perfect abode, the eternal dwelling place that knows no sun and no moon, as it is said also in one of the Upanishads.

In the conversation ofYajnavalkhya with the king, the king asks him: “By what light does a man go out and do his work and return?”

“By the light of the sun.” And the king said: “But if the sun is put out?” “By the light of the moon.” “And if the moon is put out?” “By the light of the fire.” “And if the fire is put out?” “Then he will go out and do his work and return home by the light of the Self.”

That is the same idea. No sun nor moon is needed because the city itself is made of pure light.

Now Mrs. Crowley, if you had said consciousness, but not my consciousness!

Mrs. Crowley: But that is exactly what I meant. I have been mystified all the time you were reading about it.

Dr. Jung: Then women, thou art forgiven! It is the light of consciousness, but it is a symbol of the consciousness which is not an ego consciousness.

That collective aspect of the city comes from the fact that a city is never one ego alone, but a multitude, so we are confronted with the most tremendous paradox.

The Self means the inmost uniqueness and oneness of this particular being, yet that is symbolized by a city.

This is an early Christian idea also.

One finds it in those famous fragments of papyrus dating from the first century A.D., which were excavated at Oxyrhynchus in about 1904.

In a talk between Christ and the disciples, they ask him first how they shall get to the Kingdom of Heaven, and he explains in that wonderful passage about the animals leading them there.

Then he says: “Therefore strive ye to know yourselves and ye shall be aware that ye are the sons of the Father; and ye shall know that ye are in the city of God, and ye are the city.”

You see that is absolutely in accordance with the Evangelical teaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is within ourselves.

It is our innermost nature and not in the least what certain theologians want to make of it, something between ourselves.

To say that the Kingdom of Heaven is in between people-like cement-is degenerate theology.

No, it is the entire man, the completeness, the wholeness of an individual, and that is not identical with the ego; the ego is never the Self, it does not include the whole man.

We always suffer from the fact that we are not conscious enough, that we do not cover what is within us.

Why have we neuroses? The ego consciousness is too narrow.

Whatever that strange non-ego consists of, it is quite certain that our ego consciousness is not sufficient to cover the whole.

So the symbol for the Self is an idea of a totality that is not identical with the ego.

It is a consciousness which is not exactly our consciousness, a light which is not exactly our light.

That agrees with what I said formerly: that these visions are psychological processes which have nothing to do with the conscious ego life.

They are manifestations of the psychological non-ego.

It is a widening out of the ego consciousness into the vision, one might say, of absolute consciousness, or non-individual consciousness, that consciousness which is beyond man.

This sounds terribly abstract or metaphysical, but it is by no means metaphysical.

It simply means the development of a wider and more abstract consciousness, which relates to the other narrower,

more concrete consciousness in exactly the same way as algebra relates to ordinary arithmetic, for instance, or abstract thinking to ordinary matter-of-fact thinking.

So a higher consciousness is a more abstract and impersonal consciousness.

And our patient’s vision of the city beyond the giant is an intuition of that consciousness which is beyond the actual ego consciousness, a more complete, a more perfect, a more detached consciousness.

For in the white city, one is surely in a state which is fortified against the surrounding destruction.

The city has always conveyed the idea of a fortified place, surrounded by walls and towers and moats, where inside one is protected.

But I don’t want to say any more at this point about the Self as a collective symbol; our text here does not justify us in going so far.

The vision continues: “I said to the giant again: ‘I must pass you,’ but he only laughed.”

Evidently this vision of the white city is not enough to help her.

“While he laughed many dwarfs sprang up from the earth and tore my clothes from me and I was

left naked.”

Where do the dwarfs suddenly come from?-what do they mean?

Mrs. Crowley: From the earth. They are instinctive factors.

Dr: Jung: Well, dwarfs are peculiar, they are more than just instincts.

Mr: Allemann: Chthonic forces?

Dr: Jung: Yes, but also the dwarf is mythological.

Against the giant, the dwarf. Do you remember an example?

Answer: Goliath and David.

Dr: Jung: Yes, there is the motif, the thumbling against the great man.

The dwarfs were thumblings in antiquity, and they were also called dactyli, which means fingers.

You see, they are more than just instincts; animals of all descriptions would symbolize instincts, dwarfs are mythological, which is something else.

The instincts come up from the earth, very often in the form of snakes or other animals, but mythological beings

also come up from the earth, and this time they are dwarfs.

And they tear her clothes off until she stands naked.

To really elucidate such a thing one needs knowledge, one must study the literature about dwarfs.

For instance, what do they do?

Mrs. Fierz: They are creative.

Mrs. Schlegel: They bring gold from the depths of the earth.

Dr. Jung: And what else? What do the brownies do?

Miss Pickering: They do your housework when you are asleep.

Dr. Jung: Yes, but you may not see them, particularly not their feet.

Dr. Barker: By knowing the weakness of giants, they rescue people from them.

Dr. Jung: But that is not their particular job.

They were teachers originally, they taught all sorts of arts and crafts.

They were supposed to have a particular wisdom, and therefore they often have an educational significance.

The youth Horus was educated by the dwarf Bes, for instance; and Siegfried was brought up by Mimir.

They really represent the wisdom that is buried in the earth, the extraordinary cunning and craft of nature.

They are always the keepers of the secret treasures in the earth, they know where the precious stones are.

There we get the connection with the Self. Now why do they tear off the clothes of this woman?

Mrs. Baynes: Because she has hesitated to be true to herself against public opinion.

Dr. Jung: Yes, she has kept up appearances-wearing certain clothes, adopting a certain external attitude-in order to ingratiate public opinion.

Naked, she is nature; then things will change, public opinion will collapse when she has all the forces of nature on her side.

Now, psychologically dwarfs mean the innate spirit in things. Think of this for next time.  ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 431-446