Consciousness, no matter how extensive it may be, must always remain the smaller circle
The Practice of Psychotherapy CW 16
Consciousness, no matter how extensive it may be, must always remain the smaller circle within the greater circle of the unconscious, an island surrounded by the sea; and, like the sea itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-replenishing abundance of living creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming.
We may long have known the meaning, effects, and characteristics of unconscious contents without ever having fathomed their depths and potentialities, for they are capable of infinite variation and can never be depotentiated.
The only way to get at them in practice is to try to attain a conscious attitude which allows the unconscious to co-operate instead of being driven into opposition. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 366
Consciousness possesses spatiality only when
C.G. Jung: Letters Vol 1 1906-1950
To Dr. S.
Dear Colleague, 22 February 1938
The feeling of inner detachment and isolation is not in itself an abnormal phenomenon but is normal in the sense that consciousness has withdrawn from the phenomenal world and got outside time and space.
You will find the clearest parallels in Indian philosophy, especially in Yoga.
In your case the feeling is reinforced by your psychological studies.
The assimilated unconscious apparently disappears in consciousness without trace, but it has the effect of detaching consciousness from its ties to the object.
I have described this development in my commentary on the Golden Flower.
It is a sort of integration process and emancipation of consciousness.
The cross is an indication of this, since it represents an integration of the 4 (functions).
It is perfectly understandable that, when consciousness detaches itself from the object, the feeling arises that one does not know where one stands.
Actually one is standing nowhere, because standing has a below and an above.
But there one has no below and above at all, because spatiality pertains to the world of the senses, and consciousness possesses spatiality only when it is in participation with that world.
It is a not-knowing, which has the same positive character as nirvana in the Buddhist definition, or the wu-wei,:-not-doing, of the Chinese, which does not mean doing nothing.
The profound doubt you seem to be suffering from is quite in order as it simply expresses the detachment of consciousness and the resultant explanation of the objective world as an illusion.
The neurotic character of your skepticism is due essentially to the fact that you cannot accept positively the development that is being prepared or is already in progress but fight against it for understandable reasons: it is a figurative death against which one naturally has all kinds of objections to make.
If your shadow exhibits no inferior features you can be sure that your consciousness is living in the shade, that is, is playing a negative role.
But that doesn’t necessarily make you a dark horse.
It only means that your consciousness is not yet able to see anything positive in this development towards not-being.
As a result, the shadow naturally gets a positive value.
There is indeed an important task you have left unfinished.
The development now being offered to you is not accepted positively, whereas it is the meaning and purpose of all life’s wisdom to go along with natural developments that spring from the functioning of the whole personality.
With best greetings and wishes;
,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 240-241.
Consciousness Lexicon
Carl Jung on “Consciousness.” Lexicon
Consciousness:
The function or activity which maintains the relation of psychic contents to the ego; distinguished conceptually from the psyche, which encompasses both consciousness and the unconscious.
There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites.[“Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype,” CW 9i, par. 178.]
There are two distinct ways in which consciousness arises.
The one is a moment of high emotional tension, comparable to the scene in Parsifal where the hero, at the very moment of greatest temptation, suddenly realizes the meaning of Amfortas’ wound.
The other is a state of contemplation, in which ideas pass before the mind like dream-images.
Suddenly there is a flash of association between two apparently disconnected and widely separated ideas, and this has the effect of releasing a latent tension.
Such a moment often works like a revelation.
In every case it seems to be the discharge of energy-tension, whether external or internal, which produces consciousness.[“Analytical Psychology and Education,” CW 17, par. 207.]
In Jung’s view of the psyche, individual consciousness is a superstructure based on, and arising out of, the unconscious.
Consciousness does not create itself-it wells up from unknown depths. In childhood it awakens gradually, and all through life it wakes each morning out of the depths of sleep from an unconscious condition.
It is like a child that is born daily out of the primordial womb of the unconscious
. . . . It is not only influenced by the unconscious but continually emerges out of it in the form of numberless spontaneous ideas and sudden flashes of thought.[“The Psychology of Eastern Meditation,” CW 11, par. 935.]
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