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
Once I get over the nausea (did vomit in the old days) of repulsive material witnessed (same for novel becoming wise counsellors); listening to that which was/is/remains repulsive has similar cause/effect.
For me, the 'do not forget' pus wounds that repulse me so deeply, my soul cried out and the pus/I/Thou/Other dynamic melted together, in timeless space; humble attempts to transcend repulsion with hope that lovingkindness (mercy/grace) would/will/can bring a sense of 'sweetness of the grapes out from those 'grapes of wrath', whatever they may be and so to speak). Regards Linda
I have to say that I’m enjoying this group and the Red Book. It is slow reading. I’m finding the footnotes as fascinating as the text. I think the slowness of the reading is giving me time to absorb and be absorbed by the material.
This weekend I was trying to think how I “meet Jung”. The first time I read Jung was in the forward to Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching. So I went back and re-read it. I was struck by this quote:
“As to the thousands of questions, doubts, and criticisms that this singular book stirs up – I cannot answer these. The I Ching does not offer itself with proofs and results; it does not vaunt itself, nor is it easy to approach. Like a part of nature, it waits until it is discovered. It offers neither facts no power, but for lovers of self-knowledge, of wisdom – if there be such – it seems to be the right book. To one person its spirit appears as clear as day; to another, shadowy as twilight; to a third, dark as night. He who is not pleased by it does not have to use it, and he who is against it is not obliged to find it true. Let it go forth into the world for the benefit of those who can discern its meaning.”
I keep thinking you could easily apply this to the Red Book. It is not easy to approach, it does not give you proofs or results but, hopefully, you can gain some SELF-knowledge from the book. On some level it seems to be having an effect on me. I notice I’m dreaming more and my own active imagination session’s feel deeper…sometimes the images are terrible and sometimes they are beautiful: all the time waiting without understanding.
On a more humorous note: I remembered that I had a big crush in the sixth grade on this girl…Toni Wolfe. Seriously, I hadn’t thought about it in thirty years. After last week’s discussions, it popped up out of nowhere and it made laugh. I was thankful that I had my own Toni Wolfe.
"Like" ~ I am passing through the first book again, this time reading the footnotes, and I cannot agree with you more. Fascinating. The book is so rich. I pulled 'Word and Image' off the bookshelf, another book I haven't touched in years, and it flooded back to me. There it was, the Red Book and many illustrations... I don't have the facsimile edition, so holding large reproductions of the images was moving.
I met Jung as a teenager in the late '70. I was reading anything I could find on UFO's and stumbled on his book. I was floored by the idea that this phenomenon could be a form of mass hallucination or even a physical manifestation of our collective psyches... Talk about your crack in the cosmic egg... Hooked ever since.
Loved your personal Toni Wolfe...
Hi Michael,
Good to know I wasn't the only teenager out there devouring books outside the norm.
I remember reading all those Chariots of the Gods type books, Colin Wilson's The Outsiders,etc.
I always felt Jung to be scientific outsider, which helped me tremendously as a teenager.
As you say, when the cosmic egg splits open the reality tunnel gets a little wider and a lot more interesting.
Aren't the internets wonderful? Found this in the blink of an eye:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0727371/
Erich von Däniken appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on Oct 4, 1973. I was not quite 15. I saw this episode. Awesome. It took me 2 or 3 years to come across the Jung book on Flying Saucers. By the time Close Encounters came out in '77, and everyone was all agog, I had already moved on...
Thanks for the tip on Wilson. Great, more reading... Already downloaded his Outsiders Cycle.
Yes, a professor at NYU, back in the '90s, equated Jung with crystals... I was happy to find my daughter reading a book on Jung a few years back, assigned to her while at Rutgers.
Always liked 'Cosmic Consciousness' by Bucke, published 1901. My friends would laugh, thinking it was some New Age hippie book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Maurice_Bucke#Cosmic_conscious...
Free PDF: http://selfdefinition.org/christian/Cosmic-Consciousness-by-Richard...
Possibly my favorite book: 'Man and his Gods' by Homer Smith. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Smith
I found it in my HS library. Forward by Albert Einstein.
Free PDF: http://www.thevenusproject.com/downloads/ebooks/30426379-Homer-W-Sm...
Cheers...
Last week I was reminded of an Anthony Burgess book 'The End of the World News.' I hadn't read it it over twenty years, but it often comes to mind when thinking of Freud, as there is a Freud thread woven into the story. So I picked it up last night and found this line in the preface. It came from a Burgess' notebook, found by his executor. It reads:
In an ever expanding universe, it may just be that something can come from nothing... It may be the very nature of the universe that a Phoenix will always rise from the ashes... Every process in nature has it's opposite, so entropy has negentropy... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy Life will find a way...
As soon as I left home yesterday, traveling to the west coast, it occurred that the man that coined the term negentropy, Erwin Schrödinger, is also the author of a thought experiment involving a cat in a box, and the question about not knowing if the cat has died until you open the box. He poses that both realities coexist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger%27s_cat ~ This is probably the most thought about example of negative capability. Books have been written, and schools of thought ponder this question daily. The real crazy part is the many-worlds interpretation, in which quantum physicists argue over whether there are two universes that split off from each other once the box is opened...
Good morning all - being with the discomfort of not knowing; share what this is like for me; notice where Jung (I/We) go to metaphor, to embodiment and back again:
I awoke abruptly, before daylight and the bird songs, to a voice that said "calamity." I got out of bed and immediately felt nauseated with a sense of shudder going up and down my spine. I simply noticed and yuck was the feeling as I watched a parade of images march across my mind - old deep wounds. The first seen in my beginning in the 60's and the last seen in 2012. I tried to stop the emergence of these deep wound images, full of purulent, sero sanguinous discharge, some down to the bone with odour of rotting flesh from manifesting in my conscious awareness. I am unable to just sit still and walk to another place. But alas, I can not. These dismembered, horrible wounds demand my attention for they could not heal in their time - way too deep, resistent bugs. My soul cries out in the depth of those moments connecting with those wounds and two images appear: angelic expressions upon the faces of a teen boy and grandmother. These images are detached; they have no bodies. I feel a sense of freedom from these horrific abominal wounds; guts exposed and I hear the words "do not forget."
I regroup, return to my bed and try to fall back to sleep. My body is no longer repulsed, relaxed enough to rest, however, I need prayers to calm my mind and soul. A relaxed state comes over me and the next thing I remember is waking up this morning and wondering if I dare share this with the group?
Following a leisurely Sunday morning breakfast; I wait and send it feels right.
Chris and Janet, your opening questions were invaluable, and I identified with your feelings: thrilled, confused, excited and worried. Ava’s elucidation of negative capability was so helpful - “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” (Jung sounds like Keats)! Thank you, Robbie, for depicting the quandry we all are in trying to hold the multitude of opposites of absurdity and meaning in trying to reach the medicina of the Red Book. It does get to me when Jung launches into explanations, trying to make sense of it all when he just said “incapacity, madness, doubt, confusion.” No matter how well we know it, it’s continually complex, baffling, almost impenetrable and a blatant challenge to do our own work. We’re in the soup! Initially, there’s the fear that nothing is there, that the soul in me is too lost or deprived (depraved!) or the images will be too unbearable. I don’t understand a thing, but here are some images that I felt from Jung as an experience (poor and coming in with empty hands):
234 He beds down on the thorns and fire...Every step closer to my soul excites the scornful laughter of my devils, those cowardly ear-whisperers and poison-mixers.
238 The Spirit of the Depths is pregnant with ice, fire and death. If the Spirit of the Depths seizes you, you will feel the cruelty and cry out in torment. You are right to fear the Spirit of the Depths, as he is full of horror.
... a new sun glowed, the sun of the depths, full of riddles, a sun of the night...the sun of the depths quickened the dead, and thus began the terrible struggle between light and darkness. Out of that burst the powerful and ever-vanquished source of blood.
239 Therefore, I take part in that murder; the sun of the depths also shines in me after the murder had been accomplished...I myself am a murderer and murdered, sacrificer and sacrificed. The up-welling blood streams out of me.
...In you the reborn one will come to be, and the sun of the depths will rise and a thousand serpents will develop from your dead matter and fall on the sun to choke it. Your blood will stream forth.
Everything that up to now seemed to be dead in you will come to life, and will change into poisonous serpents that will cover the sun, and you will fall into night and confusion.
But the serpents are dreadful evil thoughts and feeling.
I haven't started the second CD/recording. Was re-reading Liber Primus on the plane last night from Seattle to Newark via Phoenix... This morning I stumbled across this:
96. One should part from life as Odysseus parted from Nausicaa: with a blessing rather than in love.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm ~ Beyond Good and Evil
Which led me to this:
Nausicaa is also a mother figure for Odysseus; she ensures Odysseus' return home, and thus says "Never forget me, for I gave you life," indicating her status as a "new mother" in Odysseus' rebirth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausicaa
It's so refreshing to read a 3000 year old text and know that the Spirit of the Depth was present.
The "survey" for CD1 from Jung Platform had one question I didn't find an answer to: Jung was a pessimist (T/F). I answered False, of course, but I didn't find the answer in the text or the recording...
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