I came across a passage from Jung the other day that inspired a short essay/commentary. Hereโs the citation from Jung:
“Empirical psychology loved, until recently, to explain the โunconsciousโ as mere absence of consciousnessโthe term itself indicates as muchโjust as shadow is an absence of light. Today accurate observation of unconscious processes has recognized, with all other ages before us, that the unconscious possesses a creative autonomy such as a mere shadow could never be endowed with.” (Psychology and Religion, par 141)
Like Hillman, I also share Jungโs misgivings about this label, โunconscious,โ to denote that vast, ever-present mystery out of which our incalculably more limited, precarious, and biased ego-consciousness has been born. The use of โun-โ as a prefix slyly but effectively gives the word a negative, privative characterโwhen we actually might be wiser to apply the concept to our consciousness. For it is the generally blinkered, biased, โen-cavedโ ego that is blind to the wondrous powers and marvels that the so-called โunconsciousโ is teeming with.
When viewed from this standpoint (a kind of Copernican revolution in perspective, or a faint echo of what Kant achieved with his transcendental idealism), the so-called โunconsciousโ is significantly ennobled in ontological-epistemic status into something like an ๐๐๐ฃ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐ข๐. Simultaneously, the so-called โconsciousโ ego is re-visioned as a kind of moon that โ at best โ can receive and reflect a fraction of the light coming from the self-luminous, and independent sun. Like moons and other satellites, the ego does not produce its own light. It receives and transmits it โ if and insofar as it opens itself up to exposure. It is precisely to the extent that the ego-consciousness walls itself into a more or less defended and mentally isolated position vis-ร -vis its own source that this โsunโ becomes invisible. In actuality, this โsunโ is faithfully, perpetually shining. It is only obstructive clouds and the egoโs degree of openness that finally make the difference.
But are there not dangers at the other extreme โ of becoming excessively exposed to this sun, in the way that young, reckless Icarus did? Life, as we know it, is able to exist on our planet because it is neither too close to, nor too distant from, the blazing sun. Mercury and Venus are far too hot, Neptune and Pluto too cold, for life. Analogously, the consciousness of the human seems to function best when it succeeds in maintaining optimal exposure to its generative, nourishing source. If and when it becomes estranged or timidly defended against that source, consciousness, like life, begins to freeze up, rigidify, and hibernate. If, on the other hand, that tempering, buffering distance collapses (say, in a Dionysian fit of ecstatic zeal), everything solid and stable within oneself begins to melt, dissolve, and evaporate. If โenlightenmentโ comes too suddenly to the unready mind, the circuit board can be fried.
Here we can faintly glimpse a fundamental distinction between Western and Eastern โwisdom teachingsโ about the ego/source problem. In classical Greek culture, the virtues of moderation and measure (โnothing in excessโ) were praised and cultivated. In Christianity, it is the all-important relationship between the believer and God (and not identification with Him, which would amount to an outrageous inflation and blasphemy) that is inculcated and encouraged. In both the pagan Greek and Christian outlooks, the rational or individual ego is assigned a kind of autonomy and value that we are not likely to find so prominently in the East. Nevertheless, this situation is beginning to change as Western individualism spreads like a coronavirus across the globe โ as a kind of normative value. The ego, in the East, has traditionally been regarded as a kind of fiction โ a mental construct formed by memories, habits, belief in words and concepts, recurring patterns of desire and fear. Thus, its transcendence(by means of cultivated detachment and dispassion) is often prescribed โ not its ongoing cultivation, individuation, and fulfillment, as we see more commonly in the West, at least since the Renaissance.
It is not altogether surprising that this problematic notion of the โunconsciousโ emerged in the modern West. Before the rise and spread of modern rational-empirical science, beginning in the 17th century, the so-called unconscious (along with its archetypes) was unreflectively projected onto human and natural objects and processes. This endowed the human and natural/cosmological realms with a quality of enchantment โ of mystical, mythical, and often miraculous power โ that modern empirical science has, in effect, de-mystified and dis-enchanted by reducing such phenomena, as thoroughly as it can, to its critical, methodological, and material terms.
In this way, the modern scientific worldview implicitly operates like an Archimedean lever that can move the world. We saw the replacement of the Ptolemaic, geocentric, โgreat chain of beingโ cosmos, first by the Newtonian-Copernican solar system, and then by the exponentially expanded and relativized, Einsteinian-quantum universe. This has left many humans feeling completely dwarfed in size and ontological importance, and yet there is something unmistakably anthropocentric about this Archimedean lever. Paradoxically, this (perhaps compensatory) modern anthropocentrism seems to outstrip (or dwarf?) the medieval worldview that placed mankind at the (God-surveilling) center of everything. The not-so-subtle irony is that the โinnocentโ (pre-scientific) medieval belief that humans are a divinely sponsored species at the center of things is ultimately theocentric, while the scientistic-materialistic modern view โ that we are an insignificant, unsponsored species hurtling through space-time on an unreliable and by no means unique planet โ is thoroughly, if somewhat grimly, anthropocentric.
I would suggest that it is from this anxious-brave, nihilistic-heroic, blinded-enlightened anthropocentrism or godless humanism that our inverted understanding (or misconstrual) of the โunconsciousโ has emerged. Without the โGodsโ or some kind of divine guidance to support and ground us, we are left desperately dependent upon our own painfully limited moral, intellectual, and imaginative resources. Do these musings make our shared mess any less murky?
