Ego and Archetype - Psyche and World Religion - Genesis & Job
My first impulse is to share my deep gratitude for Kyle Williams and her courage in teaching this class. It is truly, and we are only in week 3, one of those life-changing experiences. All engaged education is, ideally, transformative, but this class is one that reaches very deeply into me. It addresses, in my humble opinion, the evolution of consciousness on both individual and collective levels AND its key challenges in the clearest, simplest and most intellectually compelling ways I've experienced thus far in my studies. In great measure I have Carl Jung to thank for paving the way for much of the insight I am gaining these days.
The ONE AND ONLY text for the class (usually there are between 3 and 7) is EGO AND ARCHETYPE by Ed Edinger. This book is a true treasure. I CANNOT RECOMMEND IT HIGHLY ENOUGH.
From the back:This book is about the individual's journey to psychological wholeness, known in analytical psychology as the process of individuation. For contemporary men and women, Edinger believes, the encounter with the Self is equivalent to the discovery of God. The result of the dialogue between the ego and the archetypal image of God is an experience that dramatically changes the individual's worldview and makes possible a new and more meaningful way of life.
The first class was a big eye-opener, especially as my first return to academia after . . .life happened. . .and I took 2 quarters off. We quickly dove into the texts and imagery of Christian Creation Myths: Genesis I & II. We looked at the myths as metaphor for the birth of human consciousness . . . and all HELL broke loose. wow. It was so amazingly fascinating to watch the religion-identified-egos in the room jump to attention to defend themselves and their fellow classmates from perceived slight - even though they didn't seem to know exactly what it was that they were defending. You couldn't cut the tension in the room with a katana. Kyle held the energy expertly. I was enthralled. This is subversive stuff.
Genesis II - Original Sin and The Fall of Man
My first real epiphany was that there were TWO trees in the Garden of Eden, not one. There is the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, from which eve picks the apple, and there is the Tree of Life. This second tree is apparently often overlooked. . .I was raised Roman Catholic and I didn't know that there were TWO forbidden fruits, did you? Further, the tree of knowledge surrounds the tree of life, like a hedge, standing as a sort of guardian, or PATH to the tree of Life. Interesting. Symbolically, according to this myth, consciousness surrounds and protects Life as well as being a path TO Life (or immortality). One of the reasons God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden was to keep them from gaining access to the tree of Life and thus gaining immortality as well as consciousness (awareness, knowledge of good and evil) and thus becoming like God. What do you think God was afraid of? A little competition? Jealousy maybe?
Which brings me to the major point of contention for some of the the class: God is NOT Good. God is the Archetypal Undifferentiated Self, (according to Jung and Edinger) meaning that God is ALL things and experiences. Even in ancient Christian mythology. ESPECIALLY in ancient Christian Mythology, right from the get-go God is portrayed as acting erratically and emotionally, fraught with jealousy and fits of rage and retribution. It's not a pretty picture, you know? One way to put it is that his divine love is only as numinous as his divine wrath. Good and Evil are part and parcel to Infinite Unity; inescapable. (Lucifer is, after all, a son of God.)
In infancy we are undifferentiated too. We believe that we are all that exists. We cannot distinguish the difference between ourselves and our mothers, or the surrounding world. In fact, we directly identify ourselves with our mothers, and if that goes well, with the surrounding word. We believe that we are the cause and effect of everything that happens, creating our world in each moment. . .just like God creating the universe in his own image, we are the masters of all we survey. And we are prone to outbursts of rage and retribution in order to get what we want. We just cannot believe that our mother, our creation, (Adam and eve) would go against our will. This dissonance between what we will and what really happens is the catalyst for the evolution of consciousness. We can then begin to become aware that there is a difference (hence differentiation) between our Self and our Ego. This is symbolized in the Fall from Grace in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden for disobeying God, BUT they gain self awareness, they become conscious.
I know I'm mixing personal, collective and archetypal references but this is how it makes sense to me now. At least I'm not mixing in imagery from other myths and cultures. . .as tempting as that is to do. . .so let's move on to the SNAKE!
But first let's recap: God put Adam on the earth and made woman from him. (which means, of course, that Adam, the original MAN was hermaphroditic, or Eve could not have been made FROM him.) He then tells them, in essence, "See the fruit of that beautiful tree over there in the center of the garden? That juicy delicious, enticing APPLE? Yeah, don't eat that, ok?" So along comes the snake, not tempting Eve, but simply informing her of what will really happen if she eats the fruit. In essence, the Snake told the TRUTH, where God LIED to Adam and Eve. God said they would DIE upon eating the fruit. The snake says that their "eyes will be opened". Which is what happened. hmmmm.
Why did God put the trees in the garden if not to tempt us with them? Could he not have omitted them from his manifested creation? What role does the snake REALLY play in the archetypal drama of the birth of consciousness? The snake BEARS WITNESS to the interplay of consciousness (differentiation) and unconscious unity (undifferentiation). Lucifer = bringer of light (from the greek LUminos)
Edinger says, "The Serpent does indeed prove to be a benefactor in the long run if we grant consciousness a greater value than comfort (21)." The birth of consciousness is not an easy process. Edinger goes on to write, "What is a crime at one stage of development is lawful at another and one cannot reach a new stage of psychological development without daring to challenge the code of the old stage. Hence, every new step is experienced as a crime and is accompanied by guilt, because the old standards, the old ways of being, have not yet been transcended(21)." The evolution of consciousness is catalyzed by transgression and is anything but comfortable. So what is the value in this crime? Why did Eve eat the fruit, even knowing the consequences of SIN AGAINST GOD?
This is where the so-called sin becomes a heroic act in favor of conscious differentiation. The sin is committed in the midst of INFLATION.
Inflation = Identification with God/Undifferentiated Self - Innately Self-Referential, Unity, the Unconscious (The Garden of Eden)
Eve desired to be like God and believing herself above God's Law, she ate the fruit of her own free will. This brings consciousness to the difference between she and God as she and Adam are alienated from paradise (unity, Garden of Eden) as punishment for their 'sin', or their act of civil disobedience.
Alienation = The Ego's disconnection from the Self, Separation from God/Meaning/Connection, Despair (The Legendary Fall from Grace)
Both Inflation and Alienation are crucial stages in the evolution of consciousness, or the process of differentiation. In this sense, evolution is a process best described by a cycle, or spiral. There is no static end point to the process, there is no ultimate goal. . .other than maybe immortality? Even then it seems to me that the cycle would continue. (this makes me think of Jung's thesis in Answer to Job.) So the cycle goes something like this: Identification with the undifferentiated Self, Inflation, Transgression, Alienation, Despair, Surrender, Identification, Inflation, Transgression, Alienation. . . . and on and on. The key is to become aware of the process, to become conscious of the evolution of consciousness. If one is unconscious of these archetypal instincts toward differentiation, one is prone to 'symptoms' as messages from the unconscious Self. (This makes me think of James Hillman's ideas of Archetypal Psychology.) I am particularly interested in this perspective on why despair (alienation) leads to anger (inflation) and then to violence (transgression). It infuses what I already know about victim/perpetrator dynamics with even more compassion and understanding. And then to apply the same on personal as well as collective levels brings an even larger sense of our place in history. (This makes me think of Richard Tarnas' theses in Passion of the Western Mind and Cosmos and Psyche.)
The Job Experience - Suffering as Numinous Experience
The Story of Job goes like this: Job is a good man with a big family and lots of worldly abundance. God and Lucifer (God's Son) meet during a family get-together and discuss Job's piety. God is proud of Job and believes in him. Lucifer suggests that if they take away Job's worldly abundance that Job will curse God's name. God takes the wager and give Lucifer free reign with Job, as long as Lucifer does not harm Job himself. Lucifer kills all Job's flocks and employees, his family and all his children and their families too. Job is grief stricken (to say the least) and left with nothing and yet he still believes that God is a good and just God. Lucifer goes back to God and says, "Sure, but if you take away his health he will, indeed, curse your name." ANd so God says, "Do what you will, only don't kill him". So Lucifer covers Job's body in painful, oozing ulcerations. And still Job believes that God's reasoning is sound. He pleads with God to tell him why he must suffer so. He pleads and pleads and suffers and suffers and finally God appears to him out of a whirlwind and says. . . . . . . . . basically, "LOOK HOW AMAZING I AM!!!" (where were you when I made the world, who are you next to my creations, look how tiny and insignificant you are.) And Job is duly amazed and surrenders to God's will and repents for his relentless questioning of God.
How can God be so thoughtless as to inflict such suffering upon Job for no real good reason? Because God IS thoughtless. God is UNCONSCIOUS. God is undifferentiated unity and so is representative of ALL experiences, whether judged as good or bad, right or wrong, just or unjust. That is the reason Job surrendered in the end. One small glimpse of the ALL THAT IS and Job realized that his suffering wasn't personal. In the grand scheme of the manifested universe, his life and his suffering were but minute instances of personal experience in the midst of the infinite expanse of God-Unity.
From a psychological perspective this is, again, the story of archetypal differentiation. The Ego, (Job) through suffering and alienation, becomes aware of the Self, (God) and recognizes (the Ego's) subordination to (Self/God/Unity), thus increasing consciousness. (This again makes me think of James Hillman's idea that our Gods, dis-acknowledged, have become our diseases.) It is our suffering (our symptoms, grief, illnesses, despair) which challenges our ego identification with the Self and catalyzes growth and differentiation - a leap in the evolution of consciousness.
This idea has helped give my own recent suffering more meaning. I find that I am surprisingly thankful for this immense opportunity to evolve. I am grateful for the constant reminders that my only option is to surrender to the cycle of inflation and alienation, bringing awareness to the process as I grow increasingly awake to the ongoing dialogue between Self and Ego - God and Man - Infinite Unity and Definite Separation.
The ONE AND ONLY text for the class (usually there are between 3 and 7) is EGO AND ARCHETYPE by Ed Edinger. This book is a true treasure. I CANNOT RECOMMEND IT HIGHLY ENOUGH.
From the back:This book is about the individual's journey to psychological wholeness, known in analytical psychology as the process of individuation. For contemporary men and women, Edinger believes, the encounter with the Self is equivalent to the discovery of God. The result of the dialogue between the ego and the archetypal image of God is an experience that dramatically changes the individual's worldview and makes possible a new and more meaningful way of life.
The first class was a big eye-opener, especially as my first return to academia after . . .life happened. . .and I took 2 quarters off. We quickly dove into the texts and imagery of Christian Creation Myths: Genesis I & II. We looked at the myths as metaphor for the birth of human consciousness . . . and all HELL broke loose. wow. It was so amazingly fascinating to watch the religion-identified-egos in the room jump to attention to defend themselves and their fellow classmates from perceived slight - even though they didn't seem to know exactly what it was that they were defending. You couldn't cut the tension in the room with a katana. Kyle held the energy expertly. I was enthralled. This is subversive stuff.
Genesis II - Original Sin and The Fall of Man
My first real epiphany was that there were TWO trees in the Garden of Eden, not one. There is the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, from which eve picks the apple, and there is the Tree of Life. This second tree is apparently often overlooked. . .I was raised Roman Catholic and I didn't know that there were TWO forbidden fruits, did you? Further, the tree of knowledge surrounds the tree of life, like a hedge, standing as a sort of guardian, or PATH to the tree of Life. Interesting. Symbolically, according to this myth, consciousness surrounds and protects Life as well as being a path TO Life (or immortality). One of the reasons God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden was to keep them from gaining access to the tree of Life and thus gaining immortality as well as consciousness (awareness, knowledge of good and evil) and thus becoming like God. What do you think God was afraid of? A little competition? Jealousy maybe?
Which brings me to the major point of contention for some of the the class: God is NOT Good. God is the Archetypal Undifferentiated Self, (according to Jung and Edinger) meaning that God is ALL things and experiences. Even in ancient Christian mythology. ESPECIALLY in ancient Christian Mythology, right from the get-go God is portrayed as acting erratically and emotionally, fraught with jealousy and fits of rage and retribution. It's not a pretty picture, you know? One way to put it is that his divine love is only as numinous as his divine wrath. Good and Evil are part and parcel to Infinite Unity; inescapable. (Lucifer is, after all, a son of God.)
In infancy we are undifferentiated too. We believe that we are all that exists. We cannot distinguish the difference between ourselves and our mothers, or the surrounding world. In fact, we directly identify ourselves with our mothers, and if that goes well, with the surrounding word. We believe that we are the cause and effect of everything that happens, creating our world in each moment. . .just like God creating the universe in his own image, we are the masters of all we survey. And we are prone to outbursts of rage and retribution in order to get what we want. We just cannot believe that our mother, our creation, (Adam and eve) would go against our will. This dissonance between what we will and what really happens is the catalyst for the evolution of consciousness. We can then begin to become aware that there is a difference (hence differentiation) between our Self and our Ego. This is symbolized in the Fall from Grace in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden for disobeying God, BUT they gain self awareness, they become conscious.
I know I'm mixing personal, collective and archetypal references but this is how it makes sense to me now. At least I'm not mixing in imagery from other myths and cultures. . .as tempting as that is to do. . .so let's move on to the SNAKE!
But first let's recap: God put Adam on the earth and made woman from him. (which means, of course, that Adam, the original MAN was hermaphroditic, or Eve could not have been made FROM him.) He then tells them, in essence, "See the fruit of that beautiful tree over there in the center of the garden? That juicy delicious, enticing APPLE? Yeah, don't eat that, ok?" So along comes the snake, not tempting Eve, but simply informing her of what will really happen if she eats the fruit. In essence, the Snake told the TRUTH, where God LIED to Adam and Eve. God said they would DIE upon eating the fruit. The snake says that their "eyes will be opened". Which is what happened. hmmmm.
Why did God put the trees in the garden if not to tempt us with them? Could he not have omitted them from his manifested creation? What role does the snake REALLY play in the archetypal drama of the birth of consciousness? The snake BEARS WITNESS to the interplay of consciousness (differentiation) and unconscious unity (undifferentiation). Lucifer = bringer of light (from the greek LUminos)
Edinger says, "The Serpent does indeed prove to be a benefactor in the long run if we grant consciousness a greater value than comfort (21)." The birth of consciousness is not an easy process. Edinger goes on to write, "What is a crime at one stage of development is lawful at another and one cannot reach a new stage of psychological development without daring to challenge the code of the old stage. Hence, every new step is experienced as a crime and is accompanied by guilt, because the old standards, the old ways of being, have not yet been transcended(21)." The evolution of consciousness is catalyzed by transgression and is anything but comfortable. So what is the value in this crime? Why did Eve eat the fruit, even knowing the consequences of SIN AGAINST GOD?
This is where the so-called sin becomes a heroic act in favor of conscious differentiation. The sin is committed in the midst of INFLATION.
Inflation = Identification with God/Undifferentiated Self - Innately Self-Referential, Unity, the Unconscious (The Garden of Eden)
Eve desired to be like God and believing herself above God's Law, she ate the fruit of her own free will. This brings consciousness to the difference between she and God as she and Adam are alienated from paradise (unity, Garden of Eden) as punishment for their 'sin', or their act of civil disobedience.
Alienation = The Ego's disconnection from the Self, Separation from God/Meaning/Connection, Despair (The Legendary Fall from Grace)
Both Inflation and Alienation are crucial stages in the evolution of consciousness, or the process of differentiation. In this sense, evolution is a process best described by a cycle, or spiral. There is no static end point to the process, there is no ultimate goal. . .other than maybe immortality? Even then it seems to me that the cycle would continue. (this makes me think of Jung's thesis in Answer to Job.) So the cycle goes something like this: Identification with the undifferentiated Self, Inflation, Transgression, Alienation, Despair, Surrender, Identification, Inflation, Transgression, Alienation. . . . and on and on. The key is to become aware of the process, to become conscious of the evolution of consciousness. If one is unconscious of these archetypal instincts toward differentiation, one is prone to 'symptoms' as messages from the unconscious Self. (This makes me think of James Hillman's ideas of Archetypal Psychology.) I am particularly interested in this perspective on why despair (alienation) leads to anger (inflation) and then to violence (transgression). It infuses what I already know about victim/perpetrator dynamics with even more compassion and understanding. And then to apply the same on personal as well as collective levels brings an even larger sense of our place in history. (This makes me think of Richard Tarnas' theses in Passion of the Western Mind and Cosmos and Psyche.)
The Job Experience - Suffering as Numinous Experience
The Story of Job goes like this: Job is a good man with a big family and lots of worldly abundance. God and Lucifer (God's Son) meet during a family get-together and discuss Job's piety. God is proud of Job and believes in him. Lucifer suggests that if they take away Job's worldly abundance that Job will curse God's name. God takes the wager and give Lucifer free reign with Job, as long as Lucifer does not harm Job himself. Lucifer kills all Job's flocks and employees, his family and all his children and their families too. Job is grief stricken (to say the least) and left with nothing and yet he still believes that God is a good and just God. Lucifer goes back to God and says, "Sure, but if you take away his health he will, indeed, curse your name." ANd so God says, "Do what you will, only don't kill him". So Lucifer covers Job's body in painful, oozing ulcerations. And still Job believes that God's reasoning is sound. He pleads with God to tell him why he must suffer so. He pleads and pleads and suffers and suffers and finally God appears to him out of a whirlwind and says. . . . . . . . . basically, "LOOK HOW AMAZING I AM!!!" (where were you when I made the world, who are you next to my creations, look how tiny and insignificant you are.) And Job is duly amazed and surrenders to God's will and repents for his relentless questioning of God.
How can God be so thoughtless as to inflict such suffering upon Job for no real good reason? Because God IS thoughtless. God is UNCONSCIOUS. God is undifferentiated unity and so is representative of ALL experiences, whether judged as good or bad, right or wrong, just or unjust. That is the reason Job surrendered in the end. One small glimpse of the ALL THAT IS and Job realized that his suffering wasn't personal. In the grand scheme of the manifested universe, his life and his suffering were but minute instances of personal experience in the midst of the infinite expanse of God-Unity.
From a psychological perspective this is, again, the story of archetypal differentiation. The Ego, (Job) through suffering and alienation, becomes aware of the Self, (God) and recognizes (the Ego's) subordination to (Self/God/Unity), thus increasing consciousness. (This again makes me think of James Hillman's idea that our Gods, dis-acknowledged, have become our diseases.) It is our suffering (our symptoms, grief, illnesses, despair) which challenges our ego identification with the Self and catalyzes growth and differentiation - a leap in the evolution of consciousness.
This idea has helped give my own recent suffering more meaning. I find that I am surprisingly thankful for this immense opportunity to evolve. I am grateful for the constant reminders that my only option is to surrender to the cycle of inflation and alienation, bringing awareness to the process as I grow increasingly awake to the ongoing dialogue between Self and Ego - God and Man - Infinite Unity and Definite Separation.