Sunday, February 10, 2013

Exploring Jung's Red Book, part 6


This week, we cover the last portion of the Red Book.  This is the portion that was published in its entirety long before the full Red Book, the portion known as “The Seven Sermons to the Dead.”  This text was published as an appendix to Jung’s autobiography, Memories Dreams Reflections, and has been widely read and quoted.  With the publication of the Red Book, we now see the full context of the work.

The text begins with a crowd of the dead pressing in on Jung, crying out, “We have come back from Jerusalem where we did not find what we sought.”  What is it that they seek?  Previously in the Red Book, the dead have sought Jung’s blood, his life source.  This time, they are seeking his consciousness, his light, which is delivered through a series of seven lectures, prompted by questions from the dead.  Interestingly, Jung claims that the source of these lectures is not he himself – his ego – but Philemon, the archetypal wise old man who has been Jung’s instructor during his active imaginations.

The first lecture begins:  “Now hear:  I begin with nothingness.  Nothingness is the same as fullness.  In infinity, full is as good as empty.”  With just these few words, we know that this is going to be a mystical journey, grounded in pre-Christian Gnosticism.  A Gnostic concept is introduced, the concept of Pleroma, which roughly translates as “the infinite fullness” or alternatively as “the sum of divine powers.” If one is dealing with the infinite, there are no individual distinctions and determinations, and thus it may be called “nothing ness.” Out of the Pleroma emerges creation, limited in time and space.  All of creation, including human beings, have the spark of Pleroma within, but is alienated from that infinite fullness.  Humans must bring this spark to consciousness so as to ascend to Pleroma.  In one of the most basic paradoxes, we are the microcosm that mirrors or is contained in the macrocosm. We suffer alienation from Pleroma, but it is also our true essence.

Philemon asks Jung why he speaks of Pleroma, and Jung replies that he speaks of it in order to begin somewhere, and to acknowledge that there is actually nothing fixed or certain.  Philemon makes clarification:  differentiation is the essence of creation, and since we humans are part of creation, we can’t help but make distinctions.  If we were to stop doing so, we would fall into the Pleroma and cease to exist. What sort of differentiations and distinctions are we talking about?  Full and empty, living and dead, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, one and many.  These opposites cancel each other out in the Pleroma, but they are effective in us and give us life.  And, at the same time, they victimize us, causing a rent in the fullness of the Pleroma.  The best way to proceed is to recognize these pairs of opposites, see how they drive so much of our thinking, and also recognize that we can distance ourselves from the oppositions and at least intuitive a fullness beyond the distinctions.  Psychic wholeness can only occur when you integrate the poles of the opposition, not accepting one pole over the other, and that there is something else, a transcendent third.

The dead grumble and fade away, and the first sermon is finished.  Jung asks Philemon why the dead must receive this instruction on such ancient ideas, and Philemon explains that they dead have lived incomplete lives and now they need to be fulfilled before they can enter fully into death.  These are our ancestors, who left us with their cultural wisdom and teaching, yet also bequeathed to us their unfinished work and unanswered questions.  In that sense, these Seven Sermons are not just addressed to the dead, but to all of us who are continuing to strive to answer all of those questions.

The dead reappear for the second sermon. This time they ask, “Where is God?  Is God dead?” Philemon responds that God is not dead, because God is creation. Here is another paradox.  God is distinct from Pleroma, because God is a manifestation, where Pleroma is fullness and unity.  But God does also have an identity with the Pleroma, like all of creation does.  Philemon explains that another name for God is “effective fullness;” another name for the devil is “effective emptiness.”  Both of them stand very close to the Pleroma.  What is meant by “effective?” Whereas the Pleroma is totally remote from human life, God and the devil produce effects in mundane life.

There is another being, called Abraxas, that stands above God and the devil.  This is the forgotten god and is identified with effect in general.  When the dead hear this, they are very agitated; it seems that they were Christians while they were alive, and this is far beyond their understanding and acceptance.   Philemon is not distressed by this reaction from the dead; they may have been nominal Christians, but they lived during a time when knowledge was place far above belief.  Now they cannot grasp a God who both creates and destroys.  A god like Abraxas represents force, duration and change – the sum of all effects experiences by humankind – and is therefore more akin with the blind forces of nature that comprise the universe.  Abraxas is the world, its becoming, and its passing.

This brings us to the third sermon. The dead want to know about Abraxas.  Philemon explains that Abraxas is the ultimate good and ultimate evil, the mother of both good and evil, life and death, light and darkness. He is the coming together of the Christian God and Satan, as Shamdasani put it (RB Intro, p. 206)  He is terrible, a monster of the underworld, a frenzy. As said in the Red Book, “Before him is no question and no reply.”  He cannot be understood, because that would diminish him. We may wish to call lawfulness God, but the universe also contains chance, sin, and irregularity, and so God must be beyond mere lawfulness.

That brings us to the fourth sermon.  The dead call Philemon “the accursed one” and implore him to speak to them about “gods and devils.” Philemon says that there are innumerable gods.  Look into the night sky.  Each star is a god, and the space that each star fills is a devil.  But there are four principle gods, each of which is under Abraxas.  The first god is the Sun God.  The second god is Eros, the one who binds the others together.  The third god is the tree of life.  The fourth god is the devil.  These gods are all equal to one another in power.  Perhaps there are even as many gods as there are human beings.  But when it comes to Abraxas, worship and prayer mean nothing, because such things neither add to or take away from the highest of the gods.  At this, the dead interrupt with anger and mockery.  Jung gently admonishes Philemon for espousing polytheism, which had long ago been overcome by the Christian fathers.  Philemon explains that the dead took a practical approach to their world – made weighing and counting the most important things in life – but failed to acknowledge the sacred aspects of the material world.  They failed to atone for the slaughter and destruction of the material world.  Now, Philemon is giving voice to the powerful gods that demand vengeance.  At the end of this sermon, Philemon kisses the earth, saying “Mother may your son be strong.”  Then, gazing upward, Philemon states, “how dark is your new light.”  (RB, p. 239)

The fifth sermon comes on the following night. The dead implore Philemon to teach them about the church and holy communion. Philemon responds, “The world of the Gods is manifest in spirituality and in sexuality.  The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in sexuality.”  (RB, p 352).  Clearly, Jung has left behind the idea of sex as a purely biological drive;  sexuality and spirituality are seen as interdependent forces, with sexuality as a sacred act. Philemon explains that spirituality is a sort of embrace from the celestial mother, while sexuality may be equated with PHALLOS, an earthly masculine creative power. 

Next, Philemon explores the concept of community. Those who lack community succumb to sickness and suffering.  But those who are excessively drawn into community also suffer. A balance must be struck. Individuation, as Jung will later describe it, neither pushes the collective away, nor overly identifies with.  Instead, one assimilates aspects of the collective and utilizes them to live a life of uniqueness and integrity.

To quote from the Red Book:

In the community every man shall submit to others, so that the community be maintained. for you need it.
In singleness every man shall place himself above the other, so that every man may come to himself and avoid slavery.
Abstention shall hold good in community, extravagance in singleness.
Community is depth, singleness is height.
Right measure in community purities and preserves.
Right measure in singleness purifies and increases.
Community gives us warmth, singleness gives us light.  (RB, p. 353)

The theme of sexuality and spirituality continues into the sixth sermon. Philemon explains that sexuality comes to the soul as a serpent, spirituality comes to the soul as a white bird.  There is a daimon of sexuality who is mischievous, whorish, and even tormenting. There is a daimon of spirituality that is solitary, chase, and a messenger of the mother.  The dead implore Philemon to stop this kind of talk.  Is it his intention to turn back the wheel of the rational and succumb to ideas of gods, daimons, and souls?  Is he so superstitious?   Philemon proposes that perhaps his folly would be a good complement to their cleverness.  With these teachings, the earth may rise again.

That brings us to the seventh and final sermon.  This time, the dead wish to learn about man. Here is what Philemon told the dead:

Man is a gateway, through which you pass from the outer world of Gods, daimons, and souls into the inner world, out of he greater into the smaller world. Small and inane is man, already he is behind you, and once again you find yourselves in endless pace, in the smaller or inner infinity.
At immeasurable distance a lonely star stands in the zenith. "This is the one God of this one man, this is his world. his Pleroma, his divinity.
In this world, man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world.
This star is the God and the goal of man.
This is his one guiding God.
in him man goes to his rest.
toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death,
in him everything that man withdraws from the greater world
shines resplendently
To this one God man shall pray. Prayer increases the light of the star. it throws a bridge across death.
it prepares life for the smaller world, and assuages the hopeless desires of the greater.
When the greater world turns cold, the star shines.
Nothing stands between man and his one God, so long as man can turn away his eyes from the flaming spectacle of Abraxas.
"Man here, God there.
"Weakness and nothingness here, eternally creative power there.
Here nothing but darkness and clammy cold
There total sun.

But when Philemon had finished, the dead remained silent. Heaviness fell from them, and they ascended like smoke above the shepherd’s fire, who watches over his flock by night.

There are a few more passages in the Red Book, but that is the end of the Seven Sermons to the Dead.  In those final passages, Philemon speaks of man’s inhumanity to man.  There is another encounter with Elijah and Salome, wherein Elijah complains of losing his power to Jung and is astonished that the old God is slipping away from this world, in favor of a multiplicity of smaller gods. Elijah bids Salome to depart with him, but as she leaves, she whispers to Jung that she actually prefers the multiplicity. Jung is implored by his soul to return to obedience to the Gods; he replies that this is impossible for him, even if this brings them suffering and invokes their rage.   In the final active imagination, Philemon is strolling in his garden, talking to one of the shades.  They discuss how man has grown beyond being slaves of God or swindlers, but rather they grant hospitality to God. In this garden is both Christ and the devil, and they have much in common. In the end, the shade says, “I bring you the beauty of suffering.” 

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