Marie-Louise von Franz, C.G. Jung and the Problems of Our Time

C.G. Jung and the Problems of our Time by Marie Louise von Franz (translated by the author) Zurich, June 6th 1969.)

Towards the end of his life, Dr. Jung did not bother any longer about the outer peripeties of little everyday events, his rnind was directed in deep concern on the general world situation.

Not only the threat of an atomic war,  but even more of the increasing over-population worried him deeply.

For the first time perhaps in all kno’lll history, the survival of humanity as a whole seemed threatened, and today, eight yea.rs after his death, the situation looks to me even gloomier than in his lifetime.

Therefore it is a natural reaction for us to look for the background processes in the collective unconscious, and to try to find out if and how its obstructive or healing powers a.re constellated.

As the fate of humanity as a whole is at stake, it seems natural to ask ourselves if there is a.n archetype which represents, so to speak, the whole of mankind and its destiny.

In fact in nearly all the big religions of the world this archetype does reveal itself in the imar.e of the so-called original or cosmic man.

Just as a11 other objects, rivers, towns, animal species, etc. have – according to the primitive idea – an archetypal representative in the “Beyond”, i.e. in the collective unconscious, so man himself also has thefigure of the afore-mentioned gigantic cosmic man, who is rega.rded as the life-principle and meaning of all human life on earth.

This Anthropos figure A represents, if viewed from the standpoint of the individual, the qoal of his individuation, i.e. an aspect of the Self.

But in this image of the Self, in contrast to many of its other symbols
tor instance, the madala, lapis or star), an emphasis is laid on a union of the whole of mankind.

If we now look at this special Self image, we might therefore find some hints which could throw light upon the problems of our time.

According to many creation myths of different nations, the whole universe arose originally from the parts of a huge hu.man figure.

In the Germanic Edda it was the giant Ymir:

“From Ymir’s flesh the earth was formed, from his bones the mountains,  •”

In China it was the figure of the divine dwarf; giant man P’an ku, who became the cosmos.

P’an means eggshell, o make firm, and Ku: undeveloped, unenlightened.
i.e. embryo.

When P’an ku cried, the Yellow river e.nd Yangtze-Kiang came into being, when he breathed, the wind sprang up, when he spoke, thunder a.rose, when he looked around, lightning flashed.

Then he died, the four holy mountains (with the Sung mountain as the fifth in the middle ) came from his body.

His eyes became the sun and moon.

Much later he reinca.rnnted through a virgin, “the holy mother oft.he first cause”, and became a cultural hero.

Similar ideas exist in the old Indi&n Vedic literature.

There it was the comic ancestor of mankind, Yama, who later became (in the Upanishads) the Purusha., which means: Man, Person. Be represents the individual Self and, at the same time, a cosmic Self, indwelling in all beings.

In the Rigveda (X.19) the four castes sprang from the body of the thousand-eyed Purusha and later, when the gods sacrificed him1 the moon came from his mind, the sun from his eye, the air from his navel and the sky from his skull, etc.

“He is”, a text says, “all that was and all  that will be”, “Verily he is the inner Self of all beings” (1′.iwidaka Up, 2,1.)

In the old Iranian religion the corresponding figure is Gay8mart.

The word comes from Gayo – eternal life and  maretan- mortal existence.

He was the semen of the good God Ohrmazd, the first priest-king.

When he was killed by the evil God Ahriman the eight metals flew from his corpse an« from the gpld,his soul, sprang a. rhubarb pla.nt from which came the first human couple.

The water stems from bis tea.rs, the plants from his hair, the holy cow from his right hand a.nd the fire from his mind.

This decay of a gigantic man into the universe, or his transformation into it, describes, if we see it from the. psychological standpoint, a most primordial pre-conscious act of projection, an event which leads to that state of
affairs which anthropologists and psychologists describe as the most original state of mankind and of the child, namely the state of a complete “participation mystigue” with the whole surrounding world.

Jung has called this state archaic identit.v. In it there is no ego consciousness, no discrimination. between subject and object, or between ego and Self.

They a.re all one.

If this original wholeness should ever become something individual, it must
first fall apart into single components or emanate from them, so to speak, in a pre-conscious act of projection, so that they can l\fterwards become conscious one after another.

Thus this original archaic identity is something which ha.s to be overcome in the course of our development, it it is not, it becomes the negative basis of all mass suggestions and infections.

But it has also a positive aspect, it is the archetype.I foundation of all our social attitudes, which found their highest expression in Christian love or
in Buddhist all-compassion.

Thus this is not only the basis of all blinding projections but also of a11 conscious forms of relationship, namely the passive act of empathy, on the
one side, and the active a.ct of judgement on the other, by which one delineates one 1s individual differences from a.nother human being.

On these two acts, e..11 relationship a.mong human beings is based.

Thus it is not surprising to find that the Anthropos figure in myths ths is often called the collective Self of humanity – and that it is a.lso an image of Eros.

Not only did the four castes come from the Indian Purusha, in the Jewish legend also Adam is often described as a cosmic giant. God assembled red, black, white and yellow dust from a11 iour corners of the world to form Adam.

According to the Cabbalist Is&ak Lurja the soulo of  all human beings were contained in Adam “like the wick of a lamp is woven from many threads”.

Therefore the primeval man is the Self of a nation or even of mankind.

He is a sort of group-spirit, from which all draw their life.

This asyect of being a. collective soul also  explains why- some
traditions assert that the body of Adam Kadmon consisted of a11 the prescriptions of the l&w.

Viewed psychologically this would mean that on this level of historical development, the Self manifests only in the religious traditions of a nation.

The individual is not directly connected with his “inner Self”, or “eternal man” but only through his religious traditions, that. express the spiritual essence of his being.

As professor Jacobsohn ha.s shown, in the old and even in the middle kingdom of Egypt, man met his noncollective individua1ity only after death in the form of his Ba-soul.

Individuation remained, in other words, projected into life after death.

This means for us a great deal of unconsciousness a.nd therefore it is not surprising that the Anthropos symbol often has a lot of anin1al attributes:

Purusha is also the cosmic sacrificial horse, Gay6ma.rt wore animal skins, Pan ku had horns or a dragon’s head and a snake’s body, a.nd Adam still had a tail, according to some R&bbinical legends .

This animal aspect of the Anthropos points, bn the one hand, to our descent from the animal kingdom• on the other words the fact that he represents the world of instinct.

This realm however is, as Jung points out, a complicated system of physiological facts, on the one hand, and of taboos, rites and clan systems, on the other, which impress a spiritual form on our drives.

These forms a.re in fact the original essence of all religions.

It often happens, however that in a later stage the unity of the drives &nd their spiritual form falls apart.

Then, the religious doctrines poisons the drives instead of regulating them.

This is a typical split which aims at a higher development of consoiousness.

But first man generally degenerates on account of his stupidity and wickedness and thus gets into a conflict with his original nature.

He forgets his origin and therefore the archetype of the original whole man, the Anthropos, gets constellated unconsciously.

In the latter the upper and lower parts of creation can unite again.

This state which Jung describes, seems to me to havo been reached once a.gain in our time: the religious doctrines are no longer in harmony with our instincts and thus the Anthropos is constellated in the c ollective unconscious, as an image of wholeness and of an Eros connection between
all men.

The image of the primeval Anthropos has furthermore a striking relationship to the number four: from tho Purusha came the four castes of India, from Pan ku the four mountains (and their centre) , Adam consists of four kinds of dust from the fot1r directions and the .Adam Ka.dmon of the Ca.bbala is realised in four levels of existence.

In Antiquity and in alchemical philosophy people connected the four letters of the word Adam with the Tetragrammaton, Jahweh, and added to it all sorts of speculations .

In many .Apocryphal traditions Adam is part of a marriage quaternio and so is Christ, the second Adam, who also appears in the centre of the Tetra.morph and the cross.

Viewed psychologically this shows that the Anthropos symbol contains a
dynamie urge towards consciousness for mankind.

But not only do many myths tell us how a giant man became the uni verse, thes·e are also myths about a later stage of affairs where this event repeats its elf on a higher level.

This is the motif of the Man of Light who falls into the darkness, or is divided into it a.nd has to be “collected” and returned to the light.

P’an ku, as we already heard, was reborn as a. cultural hero, Purusha lives in every human being as his eternal inner kernel and “who knows him escapes death and destruction.”

From Gayomart comes a. long lines of cultural heroes and from Adam all the ancestors of Christ and finnlly tho second Adam himself.

This motif found, as you all know, its exciting and rich continuation in Gnosticism and Alchemy.

In a great drama. they describe how a Man of  light, who is identical
with God, first lives in the Pleroma, then is overcome by some powers of Evil , usually the star gods, or Archone, falls or “flows” down and is finally scattered in the form of many sparks into matter where he waits for his sa.lvation,

His redemption consists in assembli ng all his scattered parts and his return to the Pleroma..

This drama symbolises the process of individuation in the individuals everybody at first consists of such a chaotic manifoldness of pa.rticlen,
and can only slowly become one person through collecting and becoming conscious of these.

But this drama can also be understood a.s the image of a slow development
of mankind toward higher consciousness, in the way Jung has described it in “Aion” and  “Answer to Job”

In the oldest historically known religions of our cultural background, a god or gods appear who a.re superhuman in Good and Evil f they personify the terrible secret of creation and a coinciia. oppositorum.

Man is completely and helplessly in their power and does not even dare to criticize them.

But then, the development of a. motif begins in the middle kingdom of Egypt and the Old Testament, where God does not only incarnete in an Anthropos figμre, but also grows in this new form above and beyond the old God or gods.

In old Egypt, the sun god (Re) only incarnates in the king who became Osiris and a cosmic power after death; but in the middle kingdom this process expanded to the nobles snd later even to all people and. was also already partly experienced before death in the Osiris mysteries.

In the old. Testament, it was first only single individua.ls like David or Job who began to suffer from God’s double morale, end from the cruelty of the god-im1tge, at the same time the first vision of a “Son of Man” came up who was more conscious and more just than Jahweh.

This is that itl’itness and ‘lfindice.tor to whom Job turns in his anguish:

“Behold, my witness is in heaven • • •my eye pours out tea.rs to God • • •”

1). This”witness” or helper we.s identified with the Sophia figure (Wisdom) of the lnter writings in the Old Testament.

Then the new God Man appeared on eartb, incernated in the historic figure of Christ.

But, a.a Jung pointed out, it was only the good o.spect of God which incarnated in Christ, whilst His shadow (Satan) fell “like lightning from heaven”,

2) The archetypal motif the ot this symbol is also a group-soul reappears in the idea of the Church forming the body of Christ .and that all are united
in it as “brothers and sisters in Christ”.

But, in the second millenium of the Christian era, the Christ symbol
began gradually to lose its effectiveness, because it only expresses the i1osi tive side of God, and God wants to enter the human being in His wholeness.

Before this could happen, the texts predicted the coming of the Antichrist in 1he way which fits very well as & description of our age.

After a general cataclysm (in the Apocalypse) a woman then appears, crowned with twelve stars’ who gives birth to a new Saviour and the latter, finally, is really a symbol which unites the opposites, the filius sapientiae of Alchemy who inoorporates the oneness of the process of individuation as a complete incarnation of the Godhead in empirical man,

As Jung says•

“That higher and ‘complete’ (teleios) man is begotten by the ‘unkown’ father and born from Wisdom, and it is he who, in the figure of the puer aeternus -‘vultumutabilis al bus At ater 1- represents our totality, which
transcends consciousness”.

3) This figure was foreseen in the visions of the Apocalyptic o.uthor and also elo.boro.ted in Hermetic Philosophy and by the alchemists, who projected the Anthropos into matter.

To realise him in thousands of variations was their main concern.

Toda.y this archetype seems constellated with such intensity in the collective unconscious that it causes the most uncanny projections and states of possession, if it is not realised consciously.

As Jung saw, national socialism was already such a movement to realise this archetype but which took a wrong destructive course, and it also lies hidden behind the seemingly rational economic theories of Marxism.

Not only do the Marxists expect a peaceful kingdom of heaven on earth, but the archetype of the Anthropos appears in projected form in the so-called
revolutionary class.

As Robert Tucker has shown clearly, Karl Marx was actually gripped by a religious myth,

According to his ideas our society is split into capitalistic owners and poor workers.

The former live in a state of self-estrangement and the victory of the latter is expected to bring a reconcilintion with man his own true self.

Thus revolution is regarded as an act of highest selfree.liution, through which mankind will win back the “natural original man”.

In the light of what has been said before, one easily recognises the old myth of the Man of Light who has fdlen into the hands of the evil archons, t.hc powers of unconsciousness {agnosia), and has to be freed. “For Marx, the commwiistic world revolution” 1 say• Tucker, “is a forceful act of men to change themselves and bring back the lost harmony and reo.lise themselves as  human. beings.

This is obviously a projection of an inner problem on to outer society.

The goal is the perfect oneness of man with nature, a true resurrection of no.ture and the humanization of it. In the Chinese version of Communism this shows even more clearly. In Mao’s words we reads

“The working class is the niost conscious (I) and altruistic one, it possesses infinite creativeness” it is, in other words, the carrier of the projection of the Light-Anthropos end. even the qua.rterne.rian structure is present, for
Mao says that the class which will redeem the world consists of four elements: the worker, the peasant, the soldier, and tho young intellectua.l, the latter being the fourtlh which causes difficulties.

Viewed from a psychological standpoint this is the regressive restitution of
a primitive state in which the Anthropos is again only a purely collective Self symbol.

As we live in a. time of neurotic dissocia.tion, the heslins symbol of the Anthropos is constellated, but if we cannot realise it in consciousness there will again and ago.in be such archaic projections of its myth onto the
outer world.

This is a.lso lead to projecting the images of the enemies of the Anthropos, the evil archons, on to a social group o.nd thus inevitably cause wars, But even behind all its distortions, one can still recognise the goal na.ture really intends to reach, namely a more and more widespread chance for individuation, i.e. of an inner realisation of the Self in many individuals.

First this was the prerogative of some noble people, then, in Egypt, it became the inner chcnce of a whole class and finally in the beginning
of Christianity the idea of an “inner Christ” spread to all men.

Nowadays it is, hovever, the idea. of a. complete inner J.nthropos in all men which is stirring in the collective l.mconscious.

The alchemists saw it in an inner encounter with their ;y.lercurius u.nd Jung a.s an inner meeting with the Self, but the same content is projected outside in t.he sociological and political movements ‘f our time: in the 18th century it wa.s projected onto the “noble primitive man”, in Rousseau’s theories on to the idea. that men was perfect by nature, and since then the Anthropos is generally projected on to one race or class.

This causes a suppression of the individual through of collective image of
me  instead. of leading towards inner consciousness.

To this one must still add another aspect.

In relatively many myths of the diviine Anthropos which fell into matter and darkness, it is only his feminine aspect which sinks down into the abyss.

The myth of the Gnostic Simon Ma.gus a.bout the Goddess Sophia is such an example.

She is caught in the lower world and waits to be freed.

The sect of the Ophites also knew a myth of a. feminine “Holy Ghost”,
Sophia., who fell into the abysmal waters and returned leter to the upper world of light.

She left the demon Jaidabeoth, the source of a11 evil, behind her in matter.

The same figure appears in the doctrine of Vo.lentinus, the foresaken Sophia, out of whose passion came matter, out of whos inner conversion came the psychic essence and out of her purification came the spirit. In most of these systems evil, the enemy of the Anthropos or Sophia, is a gnosis. – unconsciousness – from which only gno sis, an experience of
the divine, call redeem us.

“wherever it is only the feminine part of the Anthropos which gets lost, this points, as Jung has shown, to the fa.ct that in collective consciousness there is a one-sided predominance of the male Logos-principle over Eros and
Feeling.

This leads to the reaction that in the anima. of men, and in many real women, an exaggeration of unconsoious emotions arises.

The conscious, spiritual, attitude, says Jung, “loses its contact with reality and becomes ruthless, arrogant and tyrannical.

The more an ideology is unadaoted, the more it asks for acceptance and even imposes it by force.

Consciousness thus leaves the anima to the agnosia • • 1

The world of light does not want to dim its clarity and the dark world does not want to sacrifice the pleasure of its gratifying emotions • • • • and the original wholeness remcins a desidera.tum. ”

‘lherefore the unconscious tries again and a.gain to produco symbols of’ totality

This feminine, em.otione aspect of the Athropos isa.lso trying to push its elf up from the collective unconscious in our time, but again in a distorted, archaic form.

The French poet, Paul Eluard, a friend of Picasso, for instance, praises the final victory of Communism in the following words:

“Etre unis c 1 est le bout du monde e coeur de l ‘ homme s 1 a.ggrandi t
Le bout du monde s’ approche • • •

Nous prendrons jour ma.lgr8 lo. nuit
Nous oublierons nos ennemis
Lo. victoire est blouissa.nte
Nous a.vans penetre le feu.
II faut qu’ il nous soi t la sante
Nous nous levons comme le bl9s
Et nous enscmenoons l’ amour1”

But ago.in everything is projected into the outside world!

This same Eluard  said oneto a friend, who remarked that one should turn one is life into a work of art1 “No, it is the life of others that one  should turn into a work of art.”

What an evil deviation of the lov& he just praised!

Pure violation of the others through powerl :aut even so, behind it lies the idea of an emotional unification of mankind though in its regressive original form of archaic identity.

Ona can see this especia.lly clearly in the movements of the Hippies, the revolting students, the Red Guards in China and other such waves of juvenile outbursts: being possessed by the archetype of the puer aeternus – Mercurius – these youngsters cultivate pure emotion with some traces
of cultivating feeling through music and flowers.

They project all ree.sonably formulated programmes and are only connected among themselves through common emotions, which melt them into the Anthropos and causes a big inflation in them with all its dangerous consequences.

The split between the generations, interestingly enough, does not run parallel to the Iron Curtain, but across it.

Thus we have a. cross in the form of two splits ins teed of a. quarternarian
union of opposites.

And so, said Jung, modern mankind approaches the state of being a completely amorphous me.as or l\ chaos.

Against this there would be only a remedy, the inner consolidation of the individual, which would protect it against collective dissociation.

If this consolidetion does not take place consciously, it will occur
spontaneously in the unconscious in its negative form of that hard-heartedness the typical collective man displays towards his fellow men.

We can see this in the tendency towards violence which we find nearly everywhere today”.

But the soul, which can only live in and grow in human ralo.tionship
is irretrievably lost.

But the achievement of inner unity and wholeness depends on relationship, for without conscious acceptance of a partner there can be no synthesis of personality.

Therefore individuation is, in fact, the conditio sine aue non of all really valid social attitude.

Today, after a development of consciousness in our culture for approximately 5,000 years, the question arises of whether we shaII fall back into the barbaric state of primitive archaic identity, or if the Self of mankind, the Anthropos, will continue to grow into tho consciousness of
the individual.

We, who try to stand for this process, can only, as Jung once said, be like the leaven in the dough of the vast mass unconsciousness in our surroundings, for everything seems to depend on how many can realise this process consciously.

Jung foresaw, as you will soon hear him say on the television, that man will probably react against his dissociation into the masses.

In fact, in the night after the Hungarian revolt had failed, and Jung was very depressed about it, be dreamt that “the Anthropos had stirred all the same”, a dream which comforted him very much.

As the symbolic Anthropos forms the basis of love for one’s neighbour and of Eros, he is in a certain contrast to power. Jung tried to give this the greatest possible realisation in his own life.

We all who have known him, have made the experience that he was the most warmly related person possible.

He never forced one to do anything and even if he reacted with a growl, one always felt this warm feeling behind it .

Thus he was independent a.nd alone and also intensely related at the same time.

He taught us through his life how a human being can become conscious
of his individuality and simultaneously remain related to his fellow people, without falling be.ck into that original archaic identity which once formed the body of the Anthropos.

If this archetypal symbol grips us unconsciously, it causes states of possession and coercion, if it is realised consciously it creates freedom.

This freedom, as the highest feeling vo.lue of man, is, in my opinion, the most valuable gift of all that Jung has given to us. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, C.G. Jung and the Problems of Our Time, Page 1-19

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