Soul, pneuma and body...part 2.
Jung was a very long time ago for me. When I was in my teens I read through every book written by him that I could find. And when I went to study psychology, I was interviewed for my place, by a behaviourist who said, 'Jung, a bit of a mystic!'
As most of my reading at that time was about mythology, alchemy and witchcraft, Jung obviously didn't strike me as being weird on any level. He represented a different way of seeing - call it mystic if you will - a richer, more alive way of viewing the universe/multiverse and understanding how we create reality from reality...
In the 1990's I gave up all pretence of being un-mystic and set out to study Tibetan Buddhism, and on stepping backwards through time - as one does if one takes Tibetan Buddhism seriously - I shifted my thinking out of a 20th century education in science, into an 11th century view that corresponds very neatly with both contemporary esoteric concepts, and the Platonic version of perceived reality as simply a projection.
But what is projected?
The answer is (or rather the 21st century answer) - spoiler alert - memory.
The concept of projection lives on in psychotherapeutic language as the idea of projecting something. This links psychotherapy with concepts of spirit and soul...
From Wiki [+]
Projection (German: Projektion) was conceptualised by Sigmund Freud in his letters to Wilhelm Fliess,and further refined by Karl Abraham and Anna Freud. Freud considered that, in projection, thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings that cannot be accepted as one's own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone else. What the ego refuses to accept is split off and placed in another. [+]
Kit's model of the same process described memory - created during one's childhood - acting as a filter, screening out, or misconstruing reality.
Anyway - Buddhism 101.
The material world is an undivided field of chaotic activity, an ocean of ripples, a sea of electrons, protons and neutrons and as everything is at least to some extent connected; changing one thing affects another. Everything is only where it is because of everything else. I create you create me...our perception is our interpretation. In the light of this 'projection' can be viewed as a necessary organisation of information; that in order to interact with the bubbling sea of chaos we must recall the meanings of the patterns we see, in effect organising chaos by projecting our meanings.
And suddenly here I am, imagining myself sitting in Kit's room.
He is saying yet again, "fantasy, not with an f - with a ph"...and I'm thinking, Eros and Magic, of Couliano, of Bruno and Jung. The word projection implies that something is projected, and what was projected was once called spirit / pneuma and what spirit conveyed to the soul within the woven elements (the body) were phantasms...with a ph.
To be honest I was simply fascinated that such old concepts as phantasy and projection are still used in psychotherapy! In many ways they represent a hindrance, a layer of thinking that really gets in the way of asking useful questions about what is done in therapy, and the origins of the beliefs and rituals embedded in psychotherapy!
But, let's go back to Jung. The concept of inner alchemy, nei-tan - was imported by Jung, from 12th century practice, into his understanding of psychology. The alchemists regarded sulphur as analogous to the soul, salt to the body and mercury to spirit.
Nei-tan is a part of Tibetan Buddhism, mercury is still used and garlic is problematic- as it contains sulphur (which binds to mercury) so it is avoided by the practitioners who follow this path, so don't make the mistake in thinking that these ideas are only to be found in books.
Tangential Ballardian contrary note - Mercury+sulpher vermillion!
Ah, to go visit Vermillion Sands....that would be a fine thing to do!
As far as I recall, in Jungian thought, the self can be imagined as residing within a layered cloud. Closest to the centre, the cloud is lunar mercury, and then the next layer towards the outside reality is the solar sulphur of soul. The result of their union is the crystallisation into salt - the body.
Jung took the concept of pneuma - the animating star stuff - combined it with lunar symbolism - as mercury is a silver liquid metal and called it the Anima/ Animus. Meanwhile, he regarded the sulphurous, fiery sun-stuff of soul as the layer of emotion wrapped around the self. So really it is all pretty simple and Kit would agree 100% with Herr Jung, that people see themselves mirrored in the clouds of their past memories which act as filters - and project meanings onto events, because as he and William James said - events are in themselves meaningless.
To be honest, I neither know or care, or agree of disagree - except Jung was adamant that regardless of the past, new realities could always be forged.
I agree with him there.
It is just fascinating how that concept of pneuma communicating via the soul, to the body - remains though. And that transference and projection are seen by some as analogous to the Buddhist concept of obscurations, getting in the way of reality. In Buddhism what gets in the way is simply a person's bad habits! Renamed in psychotherapy, as absences and blocks.
But originally, the projected psyche had none of these negative connotations, it was thought of as a sense organ interpreting and translating information. Meanwhile in contemporary psychotherapy, projection and pareidolia are regarded as the problem - there is an idea that we would be better off without them! Yet to be without projections, to see reality as it is - would be an encounter with pure meaninglessness...very Lovecraftian!
I don't even remember who Kit quoted as using the term phantasy - but phantasms are of course what pneuma creates...I just love that idea of pneuma as star stuff!
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