Jung’s present-day approach to the Gnosis was never content with anything short of a knowledge of the heart
Contemplating the mysterious panorama of the Seven Sermons, one is reminded of a saying of the philosopher Bacon: “Animus ad amplitudinem Mysteriorurn pro modulo suo dilatetur; non Mysteria ad angustias animi constringantur.”
(Let the mind, so far as it can, be open to the fullness of the mysteries; let not the mysteries be constrained to fit the narrower confines of the mind.)
It is, perhaps, more than befitting that Jung should close the Sermons with an incomprehensible anagram, never to be deciphered by any reader.
It may well be that this was his way of conveying a quality of mysterious infinitude, of a curiously suggestive open-endedness to this treatise.
No matter how open our minds may fancy themselves to be to the mysteries contained in the Sermons, these same mysteries can never be contained by the confines of the conscious mind.
Like all genuine manifestations of the Gnosis, the contents of the Sermons may be likened to the ocean, wherein a child can cool his feet in the shallows, while at the same time bold navigators may attempt to explore its expanse, and skilled deep-sea divers may plunge into its watery depth in search of sunken treasure.
Contrary to the assertions of many orthodox critics, Gnosticism was never guilty of seeking to subject the mystery to the comprehension of the human ego, and of diverting the transcendental power of the greater for the service and aggrandizement of the lesser.
The Gnosis of old was always a Gnosis kardias, a knowledge of the heart, rather than the ego knowledge of the head.
Similarly, Jung’s present-day approach to the Gnosis was never content with anything short of a knowledge of the heart when it came to the “mysterium tremendurn et fascinans” (the awesome and bewitching mystery) of the unconscious.
Not for him the simplistic, conscious approach of the growth psychologies, the humanistic and holistic trends which in more recent times so frequently avail themselves of Jung’s name and of his concepts.
These inhabitants of the spiritual halfway houses toward Gnosis overemphasize personalistic feelings and the expansion of consciousness, inward turned to what Goethe would have called the realm of the mothers, away from the practical realities of the dull, everyday world.
Some of this school claim that the way to enlightenment consists in holding dialogues with the archetypes, fantasy figures of the objective psyche, surrounding yourself with the personified projections of your mind in the form of “higher selves” and “inner guides.”
Not so, says the voice of the once and future Gnosis, for this is precisely what your mother, Sophia, did long ago. Sophia, so Valentinus informs us, in her hubris lusted for the impossible task of personally comprehending the fathomless Abyss.
Thus she fell into the dark anguish and pain, imprisoned by the elements of earth, water, fire, and air, which arose as projected manifestations of her grief, fear, bewilderment, and ignorance, and she gave birth to monstrous children of arrogance, who became rulers and lords of limitation of her very consciousness.
The personal mind is no fit vehicle for the forces of the vast and mighty mysteries of eternity.
To adopt a facile attitude toward the dreadful darkness of the depths of being can yield no satisfactory result.
It would be both fatal and regrettable if present-day psychology committed the ancient error of philosophy and attempted to trivialize the ineffable greatness.
Similarly, the “new age” optimism and superficiality of those who reduce the dark mysteries of Jung’s Gnosis to the shallow level of their own limitations are apt to make people into the victims of the very unconscious they tend to treat so lightly.
Those who naively wish to use the archetypes for their personalistic ends will be made subject to their cruel tyranny. ― C.G. Jung, The Gnostic Jung, Page 202-203
