Red Book Lecture 2 February 2-16
Welcome all and especially newcomers to the second chunk of the RED BOOK.
As Robbie compares Jung’s experiences of image both as metaphor and as an embodied experience, we are presented with a great challenge. How to be with the Red Book both from Jung and Robbie’s perspectives in a state of Negative Capability-- being in the unknown without going right to meaning even, and, especially when an insight comes.
There is the great example of the desert and how Jung at first is experiencing it as an embodied state and then almost immediately is pulled to meaning-- desert as soul.
Robbies says:
“The Spirit of the Depth is teaching Jung to be a phenomenologist. How to wait on images... to get into their true becoming and then he can find the seeds for them and find what they are doing and who they are. If we want to honor him we have to try to move through this material without understanding. And of course, Jung fails miserably and so will we.”
So then the question comes: What are we to ‘discuss’ in this forum as we endeavor to be in the ‘waiting’, experiencing the Red Book and what Robbie and each other have to say, as an environment, a place?
Well Janet asked me a question this morning when we talked about this: “What was your experience as you listened to this section?”
I told her I had spread out the big Red Book on my bed along with the little one and as I listened I took notes and stopped the recording, re-listened to parts .... then I worried oh ,oh, I was trying to make meaning, but no, I really felt like I was diving into the experience in a deeper way than the last time I listened. I was thrilled, confused, excited, and worried.
So let’s continue on as we go slowly, waiting, being with the discomfort of not knowing and share what that is like for us and perhaps noticing other places where Jung (and we) go to metaphor, to embodiment and back again.
Chris and Janet
Replies
I have a question....should I equate drinking the pus and finding beauty in it, with finding beauty in abuse.... of the planet, of animals, children etc. These things make me infinitely more sick, than the thought of drinking the pus from boils of the plague.
In response to Gunni Britt Borden's question: I find your question about drinking pus equating with abuse on our planet, to innocents and the vulnerable, a very disturbing, provocative and upsetting one. Thank you for it. I have no other response than to wonder and stagger from thought to thought.
Thank you Robert Bosnak for your reply re: pus. In my own life, after the incest from my brother, running away, rape and torture at the hands of two armed men, life demanded, through the birth of my son, I came to terms with my desire to rest in hatred for, and feel justified in this hate toward men. In TIbetan Buddhism, this work is called dredging meditation, or maybe referred to as the Cho, sitting in the graveyard and meditating on corpses..
I think probably drinking the pus is indeed finding meaning in what is most horrible to you. I can only tell you how this happened in my life. For me personally (Jewish boy born in bombed out Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1948,) the puss is the Holocaust and finding anything in it of value has been a great difficulty. What I did was in the 1980s to work as a psychoanalyst in East Germany, the GDR, in the East Berlin psychiatric hospital the Charite, in order to deal with Germans who were suffering. This became a profound experience to me. Making friends with people who before had been put in the light of being the enemy. Many people were suffering the dictatorial oppression to the Stasi government and spies were everywhere (People Like Us, a great movie about this.) I can't say that I find anything about the Holocaust beautiful, but every cell in my being was changed by my years of working in East Berlin.
Thank you for your personal story Robert. I can relate a bit to your experience as I was born in Denmark in April of1945, a few days before the war ended. It is safe to say that my life was shaped by the aftermath of the 'time' jung speaks about - of all the events to terrible to comprehend. My mother, who is nearly 104, lived through that entire period of madness, and I am becomming more appreciative of how that has shaped her entire life.
My struggle now in 'holding the tension of the opposite' is perhaps simply lack of courage to face the grief, depression, and helplessness that confronts the descent, and yet, it seems like I am compelled to move forward to understand. To understand why this all is as it is.
Robbie - I think your story reveals the essence of the TRB journey. And, I suppose, Jung's dreams were as real as your tactile experience. How lucky you are to have had such an experience. How lucky you are to have recognized it for such. What a "shard!" What a balancing of the scale! These are the gifts that life brings us if only we are open. I think this TRB journey is about opening the door or keeping it open.
In aid of Jung’s narrative images in this section, I found the minuscule paintings at the beginning of the book in Liber Primus haunting and immensely moving, as they show how much intensity of concentration Jung invested in bringing forth (shall we say embodying?) his images. If you have the Red Book on your computer, you can blow them up. I don’t know whether this link still works, but if so, you can get a free download of the facsimile Red Book, and scroll through and commune with the paintings:
http://www.multiupload.com/XLDJJWGCE8
In Descent into Hell in the Future he has painted the blond body floating (looks like swimming) by with the scarab and the red sun along with the cave scene (p. 6 unnumbered pages--just count them), the murder of the hero (p. 8) and there’s even a little scene with Jung as initiate with Elijah and Salome in the Mysterium (p 10).
Just checking in to find this thread....thanks, go it now.
Hi Gunni - I tried to converse with you but my reply did not appear to upload. Regards Linda
Good morning Gunni - the spirit of the time wanted me to wait, so here I am this morning and what I had prepared to share with you has now changed and here is this mornings reply to you.
Seeing you and I are brave enough foot soldiers concerning the matter of pus (real or imagined); for me the effect of reading about Jung's pus moments, listening to Robbie's reading of Jung's pus from the spirit of his depths; had a profound effect upon me tow mornings ago, tapped into my memory banks of the accumulated dressing changes that spanned my nursing career with recall of what I shall name the dirty dozen.
I went back and re-read pg. 139 (Readers) to be with the forging of the Jung's pus (WW1 + WW2) - those war stories he was listening from the foot soldiers at the front-lines plus the horror he was experiencing in his time. The melting together across time, concerning both memories of real and imagined - suspended out-of-time - surreal pus surpirised the depths that got stirred in me.
Thank you Gunni for being brave enough to talk pus. Our moderators have encouraged us to speak with each other and God/the gods know; I have waited a lifetime to find a forum such as this one. I am grateful for the grace of this space within my(our) time to recall, share and create more sweet grapes in my senior years for the benefit of mankind. Regards Linda
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