A belated reply. Thanks for your reply. My article addresses the problem of the "Chtonic Trinity" and the "Black Madonna", arguably representing the 'via negationis' of self-denial and 'mortificatio'. It is my argument that the attachment to Jung and Jungian psychology depends on the refusal to accept the 'via negationis' as complementary to the Jungian view. Unlike in Buddhist philosophy, the notion of seeing through the illusions of the world, including the "blandishments" of Jungian thinking, is undeveloped in Western general consciousness. It seems very central in spiritual disciplines, to deliberately "remove all attachments". It seems to me that this concept is brushed aside in Jungian thinking. It could be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Mats
Hi Mats,
There is a similar brand of "seeing-through" in James Hillman's archetypal psychology. And in Wolfgang Giegerich's thinking. In this branch of Jungian thinking such seeing-through is a kind of psychization or non-literalization. Perhaps this could be seen as the Western version of the Eastern removing of attachments and lifting of the veil of illusion. It's true, I think, that many Jungians do not see-through very well. They tend to be more animistic or projective. They commune with the spiritual through projection . . . and so,
belief is of the utmost importance to this type of Jungian.
Hillman and Giegerich are more advocates of non-literalization, but in my opinion they take this so far that they tend to miss the fact that there
is a literal world (whether or not our perception can convey it to us with the desired accuracy). H and G's psychization constructs a very abstract "reality" with few boundaries or structures. To me, these two epitomize what we might call "puer psychology" . . . because they discard the material and the "real" (the ground) for the infinite space of the imaginative. They offer some compelling and complex intellectual insights, but like all purely abstract philosophies, the kind of detachment they offer is lacking in Eros, as Eros is a matter of related experiencing. And most people don't live in a purely abstract universe, but in a material reality with many commonalities and affiliations. I think we experience Eros through these connections. The lonely puer floating in his (or her) abstract universe of imagining, filled with its gods and visions and profound thoughts, is detached from Eros, from the social and relational energy of shared experience (even if the stuff of this experience is "illusory").
Humans become dissatisfied (and probably neurotic or dissociated) when they are cut off from Eros. People who want to live in the imaginal, abstract realm can only get their Eros fix through the indoctrination of or into a tribe or cult. In this act, people can share a single abstract dream or dogma . . . and still manage to relate. But tribes and cults place many restrictions on membership and on methods of relationship . . . most of which are not conducive to existing in the larger modern world, in the "real". And of course, these tight knit fundamentalist tribes do not (as you point out with Jungian "blandishments") see-through their own tribal dogmas. In fact, tribes literalize abstract dogma. This is the general effect of the Eros of community: ideas become beliefs and dogmas and laws. Totems. That's a literalization of an idea (even if the idea remains immaterial).
So, the way I see it, we have a double bind. We want the puer "purity" and freedom of detachment . . . but also the communalism and connectedness of Eros. And that's another illusion for the spiritual quester to see-through. How do we see-through our affiliations and totemic beliefs and still manage to maintain relationality?
I think Jung's original thinking precludes a total commitment to any kind of via negativa, because it owes too much to biology or evolutionary thinking. The Jungian method is designed (or intended) to aid adaptation to the real, to healthy living, psychic homeostasis. Thus the dialectic emphasis on uniting Opposites in a Third Thing. In other words, just one thing or polarity or attitude or it's Opposite is not adequate for adaptive living. The individual needs to reconcile them. This is probably why Jung found alchemy's
solve et coagula so compelling. Instill the spirit into matter and the material into the spirit.
I feel this more alchemical approach is not ultimately compatible with the kind of nirvana detachment prescribed by some Eastern spiritualities. Neither Jungianism nor alchemy can fully leave the "real", the material. But this isn't, I think a mistake or oversight, it's an intentional (and ethics based) choice.
Hillman and Giegerich, despite some clever ideas, fail to adequately valuate the material. Giegerich especially is determined to dismiss the material (from psychology). But (perhaps extending Jung's own intuition) I believe that the most effective way to both see-through our perceptions of the world and ourselves, and not fall into detachment, dissociation, or nihilism, is to hold the spiritual or abstract and the material together. We come closer to the real by allowing the spiritual (or psychic) and the material to influence and inform one another (without forming a dogma around either one). Like the alchemists, we can "fix" the spirit by infusing it with materialistic thinking . . . such as we find in science (and perhaps most pertinent to psychology, in evolutionary biology and neuroscience).
This alchemical "fixation" is not a colonization or contamination of spirit with a materialist ideology, but an elemental union of qualities that does not devalue either element. Likewise, we can take the extracted or "sublimed" spirit (psychization) and feed it back into the matter that had been devalued as a result of the matter/spirit dissociation that has been the inheritance of modern civilization (but dates back at least as far as ancient Greek Neoplatonism). By which I mean that a "seen-through" understanding of psyche (a withdrawal of the animistic projections that create the illusions of Maya) can actually help us return value to matter and stop treating the material world (and anything we deem Other) as if it was simply "dead stuff" or "lesser stuff" and a free resource that is meant to provide for our every need and desire.
In other words, seeing-through helps us recognize that just because something doesn't have ego (our sense of self) doesn't mean it isn't alive or valuable . . . or that it is then ours for the indiscriminate taking without any attempt to interact with the world and with Others sustainably.
The "ineffable divine" that is imagined into all negative theologies is, I think, not an abstract thing like Bliss or Enlightenment or Nirvana. This ineffable is natural complexity . . . which is very real, very material. But our human consciousness (the ego) cannot understand natural complexity. We have not evolved to be able to have this "mind of God". All we can do is symbolize it . . . such as in Mandalas. But these symbols (as we well know) do not accurately describe the thing itself, but rather, reduce the thing to something we can consciously relate to. Behind the symbol we sense the ineffable or unconstructable . . . which we know is vast, ordered, and complex (and numinous to us). But we know nothing else about natural complex systems intuitively.
Modern research and theorization of complexity is helping us improve the language with which we construct complexity . . . and although this is still a fledgling science (perhaps still something of a pseudoscience at times), it has already helped us increase our valuation of complexity . . . which is essentially a valuation of matter. But this increase in the valuation of matter runs smack up against the old religious symbols and totems that many of us have literalized. And that places the literalizers in and among us into conflict with the "new language of the divine", i.e., natural complexity. Many of us are now fighting for our old spiritualistic constructions of the divine against the new constructions . . . but to even wage such a war, one has to be mired in the illusion of one's animistic or projective belief. The valuation of the idea or signifier of a thing over the thing itself.
That brand of illusion is the core human illusion to see-through. But what we can learn is that it is not "enlightenment" that allows us to see-through the illusions or constructions of ego, but developments in language. It is, in essence, fiction that allows us to see more truth. Just as the fiction of complexity theory (among other modern fictions) helps us better envision the connection between the material and the spiritual.
I don't think that the form of enlightenment-detachment that most enlightenment seekers seek is really allowing them to see-through egoic illusion. I suspect that what these individuals have found is the numinousness of the experience of that which dwarfs their ego (and its perceptions). I.e., the feeling of existing as something belonging to a vast complex system . . . as opposed to existing outside it or perceiving it in the conventional, reductive, egoic fashion. But this feeling or valuation, though profound, is not the same thing as knowing what it is we perceive or feel (nor is it any kind of indication that we can give up our individual willfulness or agency and let the system provide for and direct us . . . as the complex system depends on the willfulness and agency of all of its components). And to choose feeling of a thing alone over other forms of experiencing it (even the experiencing of things through Maya) is a prejudicial or limited stance . . . and no kind of enlightenment, wholeness, or truth.
The numen-worshiper still fails to experience and relate to the vastness of the real . . . and chooses to valuate certain things at the expense of undervaluing other things (which are equally valuable to the Whole).
Self-denial is a slippery slope. Even if a self-denier manages this immense task fairly well, s/he will eventually run up against the problem of the very drive s/he possesses (or is possessed by) to self-deny or see-through or detach. But to detach from that drive is to no longer valuate or seek self-denial. I would thus propose that the pursuits of enlightenment and self-denial are not apt to lead to any kind of completed spiritual journey. Rather, they serve as tools that teach us the value of valuation itself . . . and of connectedness, or Eros. They do this by demonstrating that such spiritual goals do not lead to viable solutions, and that we do not "attain enlightenment" by removing all of our projections and attachments, but by infusing our projections and attachments with consciousness and the valuation of things and Others. A living in the world through knowing fictions. This involves the acceptance of imperfection . . . and the accompanying recognition that perfection is not required to live a complete experience. Imperfection is not a limitation. The idea that it is, is itself an illusion of Maya, of egoic thinking.
This is, I think, subtly recognized in Jungian thinking (at least in Jung's thinking), and therefore, the incorporation of more severe self-denial into Jungian theory is unlikely (in my opinion) to benefit the theory. Many Jungians, on the other hand, have never taken their spiritual journeys far enough, or seen-through enough of their precious illusions to understand the limitations of spiritual perfectionism. That perfectionism still haunts and seduces them as an abstract, imaginal goal. Many who lack the discipline and drive of the spiritual hero choose (instead of bearing the torment of striving and striving but winning nothing except a greater recognition of emptiness) to totemize the goal and worship what they project into it, but from a very safe distance.
Regrettably, this is commonplace (possibly epidemic) in Jungianism today. The Jungian Holy Grail, nirvana, or Philosophers' Stone is called "Individuation", and the Jungians tend to admire it safely and abstractly instead of actually doing it. Therefore, they never even come close to seeing through the Jungian "blandishments" you mention.
