miércoles, 5 de diciembre de 2012

The art of psychology


Carl Jung has spirit guides, one of who was named Philemon. Could that name be linked to the Phi Ratio
of Sacred Geometry
Jung observed that Philemon and other figures of his fantasies gave him crucial insights. To this end he
referred to things in the psyche, which he could produce, but which could produce themselves, as having
their own life. Philemon represented a force that was other than himself, much like a channeler or
medium in today's world gets information from allegedly a source from the other side. he greatly enjoyed
these conversations as a learning tool.
Psychologically, Philemon represents superior insight to Jung. To those who do not study metaphysics,
Philemon might be perceived as a figment of Jung's imagination, or a reflection of a mental illness. Jung
did not consider himself insane. He believed that Philemon was a source of legitimate information,
whose validity could be tested in fact. This opened the door to his theory of a collective
unconsciousness, a type of library, if you will, containing everything ever known and recorded, replete
with archetypes and active principles that interacted between that source and human consciousness.
Jung had a life long fascination with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), but he distanced himself from
Nietzsche for fear he would would suffer the same fate, mental illness in his old age.
Jung's book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also Sprach Zarathustra) chronicles the wanderings and teachings
of Zarathustra, Zoroaster, the ancient Persian prophet who founded Zoroastrianism.
Zarathustra
Also Sprach Zarathustra is also the title of a symphonic poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and
inspired by the book. It is best known for its use in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey,
which is postulated to have been inspired by the book, at least in part. The opening section is used three
times, most famously in the opening title sequence of the film.
Philemon was not the only entity Jung channeled. Among the others was a cultivated elderly Indian who
told Jung that his experience was identical to many mystics. In this case his spirit guide, teacher or guru,
said that he had been a commentator on the Vedas, centuries before. Jung felt that he had become as one
with the ancient teachers and priests, and others thought to have experienced the divine.
In 1916 Jung made a connection with Basilides. Basilides (early 2nd century), was an early Christian
religious teacher in Alexandria, Egypt. Basilides apparently wrote twenty-four books on the Gospel and
promoted a dualism influenced by Zoroastrianism. His followers formed a Gnostic sect, the Basilideans.
Historians know of Basilides and his teachings only through the writings of his detractors, Agrippa
Castor, Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Hippolytus. It is impossible to determine how reliable these
hostile accounts are. Jung transcribed Septem Sermones ad Mortuos as dictated to him by Basilides of
Alexandria.
Channeling Basilides was in some ways considered a possession to Jung. He felt that his house may be
haunted, especially when his eldest daughter saw a white ethereal figure passing through the room. His
second daughter, independent of the eldest daughter's observation, related that twice the same night her
blanket has been thrown to the floor. Jung's nine year old son, experienced an anxiety dream that night
waking up terrified.
Around five o'clock that afternoon, the front doorbell continued to ring without stopping. It was a bright
summer day. the two maids were in the kitchen, from which the open they could view the door.
Everyone looked to see who was ringing the bell, but there was no one in sight as the bell could be seen
moving in and out. An explanation was never found.
Jung became frightened. He shouted out, "For God's sake, what madness is this?" Voices cried out in
chorus, "We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought."
Over the next three evenings, Jung quickly finished the book. As soon as he began to write, the ghostly
assemblage, the hauntings, stopped.
Jung's channelings of Basilides has been labeled a core text of depth psychology. The text is intriguing
for several reasons. For one, he uses the name Abraxas to describe the Supreme Being that had originally
generated mind, nous, consciousness and then other powers of consciousness into thought.
Jung did not teach the return of human essence to the Gnostic pleroma wherein individuality was lost.
Instead he adhered to individualism, which maintained the fullness of human individuality.
In metaphysics we often read that both possibilities can be encountered, and found in some religions.
The soul at its final stage can become one with source (pleroma) or maintain its separate identity inside
the One (individuation).
The easiest parallel is with the hologram, in which each 'replica' is unique, yet also the whole. If any
replica was aware, and would at one point have to ask what it wanted, some would ask to surrender into
the greater hologram, whereas other replicas would ask to retain their individual memories, though part
of the whole.
It is clear that this experience created the framework in which the concept of the collective
unconsciousness would later evolve, information transfered from a collective mind to groups or
individuals.
On the matter of his automatic writing, he later wrote, "These conversations with the dead formed a kind
of prelude to what I had to communicate to the world about the unconsciousness. All my works, all my
creative activity, have come from those initial 'connections', fantasies and dreams which began in 1912,
almost 50 years ago. Everything that I accomplished in later life was already contained in them, although
at first only in the form of emotions and images."
As early as August 1912, Jung had intimated a letter to Freud that he had an intuition that the essentially
feminine-tones archaic wisdom of the Gnostics, symbolically called Sophia, was destined to re-enter
modern Western culture by way of depth psychology. This takes us to the Gnostic text the Pistis Sophia.
Pistis Sophia is an important Gnostic text. The five remaining copies, which scholars date c. 250300
AD, relate the Gnostic teachings of the transfigured Jesus to the assembled disciples (including
his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Martha), when the risen Christ had accomplished eleven
years speaking with his disciples. In it the complex structures and hierarchies of heaven familiar in
Gnostic teachings are revealed.
The female divinity of gnosticism is Sophia, a being with many aspects and names. She is
sometimes identified with the Holy Ghost itself but, according to her various capacities, is also the
Universal Mother, the Mother of the Living or Resplendent Mother, the Power on High, She-ofthe-
left-hand (as opposed to Christ, understood as her husband and he of the Right Hand), as the
Luxurious One, the Womb, the Virgin, the Wife of the Male, the Revealer of Perfect Mysteries, the
Saint Columba of the Spirit, the Heavenly Mother, the Wandering One, or Elena (that is, Selene,
the Moon). She was envisaged as the Psyche of the world and the female aspect of Logos.
The title Pistis Sophia is obscure, and is sometimes translated Faith wisdom or Wisdom in faith or
Faith in wisdom. A more accurate translation taking into account its gnostic context, is the faith of
Sophia, as Sophia to the gnostics was a divine syzygy of Christ, rather than simply a word
meaning wisdom. In an earlier, simpler version of a Sophia, in the Berlin Codex and also found in
a papyrus at Nag Hammadi, the transfigured Christ explains Pistis in a rather obscure manner:
Again, his disciples said: Tell us clearly how they came down from the invisibilities, from the
immortal to the world that dies? The perfect Saviour said, "Son of Man consented with Sophia, his
consort, and revealed a great androgynous light. Its male name is designated 'Saviour, begetter of
all things'. Its female name is designated 'All-begettress Sophia'. Some call her 'Pistis'."
The best-known of the five manuscripts of Pistis Sophia is bound with another Gnostic text titled
on the binding "Piste Sophiea Cotice". This "Askew Codex" was purchased by the British Museum
in 1795 from a Dr. Anthony Askew. Until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945, the
Askew Codex was one of three codices that contained almost all of the gnostic writings that had
survived the suppression of such literature both in East and West, the other two codices being the
Bruce Codex and the Berlin Codex. Aside from these sources, everything written about Gnosticism
before World War II is based on quotes, references and inferences in the Patristic writings of the
enemies of Gnosticism, a less-than-neutral source, where Gnostic beliefs were selected to present
their absurdities, bizarre and unethical behavior, and heresy from the orthodox Pauline Christian
standpoint.
The text proclaims that Jesus remained on earth after the resurrection for 11 years, and was able in
this time to teach his disciples up to the first (i.e. beginner) level of the mystery. It starts with an
allegory paralleling the death and resurrection of Jesus, and describing the descent and ascent of
the soul. After that it proceeds to describe important figures within the gnostic cosmology, and
then finally lists 32 carnal desires to overcome before salvation is possible, overcoming all 32
constituting salvation.
Pistis Sophia includes quotes from five of the Odes of Solomon, found in chapters between 58 and
71. Pistis Sophia was the only known source for the actual wording of any of the Odes until the
discovery of a nearly-complete Syriac text of the Odes in 1909. Because the first part of this text is
missing, Pistis Sophia is still the only source for Ode 1.
It is clear that Jung was seeing and defining what we call the Return of (to) the Feminine Energies or
higher frequency of thought consciousness. Jung also channeled feminine archetypes including Salome.
In 1926 Jung had a remarkable dream. He was back in the 17th century where he saw himself as an
alchemist doing important work. Jung believe that alchemy was the connection between the ancient
world of the gnostics and the modern era, which would seethe return of Sophia (mother goddess
energies).
For Jung, alchemy was not the search for a way to transform lead into gold, but the transformation of the
soul on its path to perfection. Jung's dreams in 1926 and on frequently found him in ancient places
surrounded by alchemical codices of great beauty and mystery. Jung amassed a library on the great art
which represents one of the finest private collections in this field.
In 1944 Jung published Psychology and Alchemy in which he argues for a reevaluation of the
symbolism of Alchemy as being intimately related to the psychoanalytical process. Using a cycle of
dreams of one of his patients he shows how the symbols used by the Alchemists occur in the psyche as
part of the reservoir of mythological images drawn upon by the individual in their dream states. Jung
draws an analogy between the Great Work of the Alchemists and the process of reintegration and
individuation of the psyche in the modern psychiatric patient.
Jung believed that the cosmos contained the divine light or life, but this essence was enmeshed in a
mathematical trap, presided over by a demiurge, Lucifer, the Bringer of Light. Lucifer contained the
light inside this reality, until a time when it would be set free. The first operation of alchemy therefore
addressed itself to the dismemberment of this confining structure, reducing it to the condition of creative
chaos. From this, in the process of transformation, the true, creative binaries emerge and begin their
interaction designed to bring the alchemical union. In this ultimate union, says Jung, the previously
confined light is redeemed and brought to the point of its ultimate and redemptive fulfillment.
Jung made it clear that his theory was not new. It is similar to the Catharism and he stated that he was
restating the Hermetic Gnosis and explaining the misunderstood central quest of alchemy.
Jung believed that alchemy stood in a compensatory relationship to mainstream Christianity, rather like a
dream does to the conscious attitudes of the dreamer. It has been has been hidden underground, part of a
secret tradition that ran throughout Christianity, but always subconsciousness - visible by its shadows
and the traces it leaves.
He also felt that this process allowed for better understanding of male-female relationships, and the
concept of love. In the Psychology of Transference Jung stated that in love, as in psychological growth,
the key to success is the ability to endure the tension of opposites without abandoning the process, even
if its results appear to have been brought to naught. In essence, it is the stress that allows one to grow
and transform.
The union of opposites, the focus of the alchemist, was for Jung also the focus of Gnostics, whom he felt
had been incorrectly labeled as radical dualists, i.e. believing in the battle between good and evil without
any apparent union possible between the two.
For Jung, dualism and monism were not mutually contradictory and exclusive, but complimentary
aspects of reality. As such, there was no right and wrong, no order or chaos, just two opposites, duality,
polarities, that created a means to reconciliation and balance into enlightenment.
In a maner of speaking one could call Carl Jung the Father if the New Age of Consciousness, giving a
theoretical framework for channeling and other New Age practices that allow consciousness to expand
outside the box of antiquated thinking.
In the end, Carl Jung stated that such opposites must be integrated. Zoroaster calls this Zero Point.
Jung believed in an Illuminated Psyche, which goes to the Illuminati, enlightenment through the Eye
Symbology, All Seeing Eye and other major archetypes of the Masonic Program through which we
experience and learn.