Carl Jung on the relationship of Mind and Body.
The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 8)
We will put it aside for the time being and turn back to the original question of mind and body.
From what has been said, it should be clear that the psyche consists essentially of images.
It is a series of images in the truest sense, not an accidental juxtaposition or sequence, but a structure that is throughout full of meaning and purpose; it is a “picturing” of vital activities.
And just as the material of the body that is ready for life has need of the psyche in order to be capable of life, so the psyche presupposes the living body in order that its images may live.
Mind and body are presumably a pair of opposites and, as such, the expression of a single entity whose essential nature is not knowable either from its outward, material manifestation or from inner, direct perception.
According to an ancient belief, man arose from the coming together of a soul and a body.
It would probably be more correct to speak of an unknowable living being, concerning the ultimate nature of which nothing can be said except that it vaguely expresses the quintessence of “life.”
This living being appears outwardly as the material body, but inwardly as a series of images of the vital activities taking place within it.
They are two sides of the same coin, and we cannot rid ourselves of the doubt that perhaps this whole separation of mind and body may finally prove to be merely a device of reason for the purpose of conscious discrimination—an intellectually necessary separation of one and the same fact into two aspects, to which we then illegitimately attribute an independent existence. ~Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Page 325, Para 618-619.
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
Since the soul animates the body, just as the soul is animated by the spirit, she tends to favor the body and everything bodily, sensuous, and emotional. She lies caught in “the chains” of Physis, and she desires “beyond physical necessity.” She must be called back by the “counsel of the spirit” from her lostness in matter and the world.
This is a relief to the body too, for it not only enjoy the advantage of being animated by the soul, but suffers under the disadvantage of having to serve as the instrument of the soul’s appetites and desires. Her wish-fantasies impel it to deeds which it would not rouse itself without this incentive, for the inertia of matter is inborn in it and probably forms its only interest except for the satisfaction of physiological instincts. Hence the separation means withdrawing the soul and her projections from the bodily sphere and from all environmental conditions relating to the body.
In modern terms it would be a turning away from sensuous reality, a withdrawal of the fantasy-projections that give “the ten thousand things” their attractive and deceptive glamour. In other words, it means introversion, introspection, meditation, and the careful investigation of desires and their motives. Since, as Dorn says, the soul “stands between good and evil,” the disciple will have every opportunity to discover the dark side of his personality, his inferior wishes and motives, childish fantasies and resentments, etc.; in short, all those traits he habitually hides from himself. He will be confronted with his shadow, but more rarely with the good qualities of which he is accustomed to make a show anyway.
He will learn to know his soul, that is, his anima and Shakti who conjures up a delusory world for him. He attains this knowledge, Dorn supposes, with the help of the spirit, by which are meant all the higher mental faculties such as reason, insight, and moral discrimination. But, in so far as the spirit is also a “window into eternity” and, as the anima rationalis, immortal.
It conveys to the soul a certain “divine influx” and the knowledge of higher things, wherein consists precisely its supposed animation of the soul. This higher world has an impersonal character and consists on the one hand of all those traditional, intellectual, and moral values which educate and cultivate the individual, and, on the other, of the products of the unconscious, which present themselves to consciousness as archetypal ideas.
Usually the former predominate. But when, weakened by age or by criticism, they lose their power of conviction, the archetypal ideas rush in to fill the gap. Freud, correctly recognized this situation, called the traditional values by “super-ego,” but the archetypal ideas remained unknown to him, as the belief in reason and the positivism of the nineteenth century never relaxed their hold. A materialistic view of the world ill accords with the reality and autonomy of the psyche. ~Carl Jung; Mysterium Coniunctionis; Pages 472-473.
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