Carl Jung: Natural transformation (individuation)
234 h. Natural transformation (individuation). As I have pointed out, in addition to the technical processes of transformation there are also natural transformations.
All ideas of rebirth are founded on this fact.
Nature herself demands a death and a rebirth. As the alchemist Democritus says: “Nature rejoices in nature, nature subdues nature, nature rules over nature.”
There are natural transformation processes which simply happen to us, whether we like it or not, and whether we know it or not.
These processes develop considerable psychic effects, which would be sufficient in themselves to make any thoughtful person ask himself what really happened to him.
Like the old man in our fairytale, he, too, will draw mandalas and seek shelter in their protective circle; in the perplexity and anguish of his
self-chosen prison, which he had deemed a refuge, he is transformed
into a being akin to the gods. Mandalas are birth-places, vessels of birth in the most literal sense, lotus-flowers in which a Buddha comes to life.
Sitting in the lotus-seat, the yogi sees himself transfigured into an immortal.
Natural transformation processes announce themselves mainly in dreams. Elsewhere 24
I have presented a series of dream-symbols of the process of individuation.
They were dreams which without exception exhibited rebirth symbolism.
In this particular case there was a long-drawn-out process of 24 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, Part II.
inner transformation and rebirth into another being.
This “other being” is the other person in ourselves—that larger and greater personality maturing within us, whom we have already met as the inner friend of the soul.
That is why we take comfort whenever we find the friend and companion depicted in a ritual, an example being the friendship between Mithras and the sungod.
This relationship is a mystery to the scientific intellect, because the intellect is accustomed to regard these things un·sympathetically.
But if it made allowance for feeling, we would discover that it is the friend whom the sun-god takes with him on his chariot, as shown in the monuments.
It is the representation of a friendship between two men which is simply the outer reflection of an inner fact: it reveals our relationship to that
inner friend of the soul into whom
Nature herself would like to change us—that other person who we also are and yet can never attain to completely.
We are that pair of Dioscuri, one of whom is mortal and the other immortal, and who, though always together, can never be made completely one.
The transformation processes strive to approximate them to one another, but our consciousness is aware of resistances, because the other person
seems strange and uncanny, and because we cannot get accustomed to the idea that we are not absolute master in our own house.
We should prefer to be always “I” and nothing else.
But we are confronted with that inner friend or foe, and whether he is our friend or our foe depends on ourselves.
You need not be insane to hear his voice.
On the contrary, it is the simplest and most natural thing imaginable.
For instance, you can ask yourself a question to which “he” gives answer.
The discussion is then carried on as in any other conversation.
You can describe it as mere “associating” or “talking to oneself,” or as a “meditation” in the sense used by the old alchemists, who referred to their interlocutor as aliquem aliurn internum, ‘a certain other one, within.’ 25
This form of colloquy with the friend of the soul was even admitted by Ignatius Loyola into the technique of his Exercitia spiritualia/6 but with
the limiting condition that only the person meditating is allowed to speak, whereas the inner responses are passed over as being merely human and therefore to be repudiated.
This state of things has continued down to the present day.
It is no longer a moral or metaphysical prejudice, but—what is much worse — an intellectual one.
The “voice” is explained as nothing but “associating,” pursued in a witless way and running on and on without sense or purpose, like the works of a clock that has no dial.
Or we say “It is only my own thoughts!” even if, on closer inspection, it should turn out that they are thoughts which we either reject or had never consciously thought at alias if everything psychic that is glimpsed by the ego had always formed part of it!
Naturally this hybris serves the useful purpose of maintaining the supremacy of ego-consciousness, which must be safeguarded against dissolution into the unconscious.
But it breaks down ignominiously if ever the unconscious should choose to let some nonsensical idea become an obsession or to produce other psychogenic symptoms, for which we would not like to accept responsibility on any account. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 234-236
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