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NW: could you translate that for me...

Hey, it all sounds familiar to me! I think I've got this one nailed...

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...We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
Costing not less than everything...

Source: Little Gidding ~ T.S. Eliott</center>

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... Jung can say that he has never seen a patient past the age of thirty-five who was cured without finding a religious attitude toward life. A religious attitude, understood psychologically, is based on an experience of the numinosium, i.e. the Self. But it is impossible for the ego to experience the Self as something separate as long as the ego is unconsciously identified with the Self. This explains the need for the alienation experience as a prelude to the religious experience. The ego must first be disidentified from the Self before the Self can be encountered as "the other". As long as one is unconsciously identified with God he cannot experience His existence. But the process of ego-Self separation causes alienation because loss of ego-Self identity also involves damage to the self-Ego axis. Hence the typical "dark night of the soul" that precedes the numinous experience. [Ego & Archetype, Page 52]

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The calamaties that precipitiously befall Job are represented in an engraving of William Blake. Above the picture Blake printed the caption, "The Fire of God is Fallen from Heaven". Understood psychologically, the break up of the conscious status quo by an influx of fiery energy from the unconscious. Such an image heralds an individuation crisis, a major step in psychological development which requires that old conditions be destroyed to make room for the new. Destructive or liberating effects may predominate, usually there is a mixture of both. Emphasis on the latter is seen in a picture published in a case study by Jung. In this picture, which began a decisive phase of individuation, the lightning from heaven is blasting a sphere out of its surrounding matrix -- the Self is being born. The tarot card XVI emphasizes the destructive aspect. When the ego is particularly inflated, as represented by the tower, the breakthrough of energies from the Self can be dangerous. The appearance of the Self inagurates a kind of "last judgement". Only that survives which is sound and based on reality.

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With the loss of almost everything to which he attached value, Job is plunged into a state of acute alienation ... If the Self is to be recognized as the supreme value, attachments to lesser values must be destroyed. Job's life meaning was evidently connected to family, property and health. When deprived of these, he fell into despair and entered the dark night of the soul. [Ego & Archetype - Edward Edinger, Page 81]

<font color=blue>...Examplary also is Christ's attitude in the Garden of Gethsemane. "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; neverless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. (Luke 22:42)</font>

This is the classic statement of the ego attitude needed in the face of an individuation crisis. And with such an attitude, support from the archetypal psyche is usually forthcoming. Likewise, the experience of betrayal, which has its ultimate agonized expression in the words: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46) is a characteristic feature of crucial phases of individuation. At such times, the ego feels utterly deprived of comfort and support, both from within and from without. Trust, based on projections and unconscious assumptions, is abruptly terminated. This state is a transition period. It is the limbo of despair following the death of an old life orientation and preceding the birth of a new one. Jesus' resurrection symbolizes the birth of a more comprehensive personality which can result from the conscious acceptance of the cruxifiction ordeal. St. John of the Cross describes the situation in these words:

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It is meet then, that the soul be first of all brought into emptiness and poverty of spirit and purged from all help, consolation and natural apprehension with respect to all things, both above and below. In this way, being empty, it is able to indeed be poor in spirit and freed from the old man, in order to live that new and blessed life which is attained by means of this night, (the dark night of the soul). [Ego & Archetype - Edward Edinger, Page 150]

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The central image of the Christian Myth is the cruxifiction itself. For close to two thousand years the image of a human being nailed to a cross has been the supreme symbol of Western civilization. Irrespective of religious belief or disbelief, this image is a phenomenological fact of our civilization. Hence, it must have something important to tell us about the psychic condition of western man.

The cruxifiction was the culmination of Jesus' earthly life. In the course of being cruxified, Jesus as ego and Christ as Self merge. The human being (ego) and the cross (mandala) become one.


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See also:
- Forms of Spiritual Emergency: Ego Death/The Dark Night of the Soul
- John Weir Perry: Visionary Experience in Myth & Ritual
- The Only Way Out is Through