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Encounters with Light: Jung's near-death experiences · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
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  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
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  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
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  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
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  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
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  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
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  Speaker 3: Today we're going to talk about near-death experiences. It is
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  Speaker 3: a wonderful and uncanny category of reported human experience. Jung
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  Speaker 3: had a life-changing near-death experience. He writes about it extensively.
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  Speaker 3: I've come across friends and a few analysands, particularly those
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  Speaker 3: who have been in active duty military, who have had
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  Speaker 3: near-death experiences. It seems that there is something remarkable that
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  Speaker 3: happens in both the body and in the psyche when
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  Speaker 3: we are between the worlds, so to speak. Researchers, some
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  Speaker 3: of which are in the University of Virginia, actually find
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  Speaker 3: there are some similarities between near-death experiences, and they're trying
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  Speaker 3: to understand what is this about and we're going to
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  Speaker 3: try to do the same today.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah so apparently about 10 to 20 percent of people
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  Speaker 2: who have a situation in which they're near death and
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  Speaker 2: then come back from it report these experiences and so
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  Speaker 2: I think we will start with just a very basic definition.
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  Speaker 2: I'm pulling this definition from the Near Death Experience Research
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  Speaker 2: Foundation website which is a wonderful resource. And that is
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  Speaker 2: N-D-E-R-F dot org. And we'll put that in the show
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  Speaker 2: notes too. And they define it in this way. A
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  Speaker 2: lucid experience associated with perceived consciousness apart from the body
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  Speaker 2: occurring at the time of actual or threatened imminent death.
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  Speaker 3: So, interestingly enough, some people claim that they suddenly find
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  Speaker 3: themselves outside of their bodies. And sometimes they're in an
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  Speaker 3: extraordinary inner world where they encounter figures of light that
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  Speaker 3: speak to them, that are understandable to them. Other people
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  Speaker 3: say that they actually transcend the physical body, but they
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  Speaker 3: stay in the same location. And they're able to move
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  Speaker 3: outside of, let's say, the emergency services room into a hallway,
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  Speaker 3: into another room, hear and remember conversations. check on loved
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  Speaker 3: ones far away, and retain a memory of what they saw,
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  Speaker 3: and then verify that what they saw in fact was correct.
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  Speaker 4: This research foundation has been scrupulous in being able to
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  Speaker 4: verify reports of out-of-body experiences. when people are fully anesthetized,
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  Speaker 4: for example, in an operating room. And there should not
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  Speaker 4: be any physiological way that these experiences can happen. So
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  Speaker 4: these experiences, near-death experience and out-of-body experience, which are a
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  Speaker 4: little different, actually, have a lot of accounts. A lot
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  Speaker 4: of people attest to this. There's a lot of data
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  Speaker 4: on it. That's what we're here to talk about today
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  Speaker 4: as it doesn't stand up to reason. And yet, there
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  Speaker 4: it is.
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  Speaker 2: So it's a phenomenon that was first identified in, I think,
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  Speaker 2: the 70s, Joseph, is that right?
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  Speaker 3: With Raymond Moody's research. And I think identified particularly in
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  Speaker 3: the Western world. I think it had been discussed in
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  Speaker 3: other cultures previously.
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  Speaker 2: And the interesting thing about it is that researchers that
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  Speaker 2: have looked at these have noted that there are commonalities
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  Speaker 2: across cultures. And there's some basic features that many of
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  Speaker 2: them have. So many of them have an experience of...
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  Speaker 2: kind of rapid movement through space. It might just be
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  Speaker 2: kind of rapid movement across a landscape. And in the West,
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  Speaker 2: there's often an experience of moving rapidly through a tunnel.
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  Speaker 2: But in other cultures, it might be rapid movement over
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  Speaker 2: a landscape, for example. And then another common experience is
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  Speaker 2: the experience of meeting dead relatives. And most of the
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  Speaker 2: people that you meet in an NDE apparently are deceased,
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  Speaker 2: although not all of the time, but something I think
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  Speaker 2: like 90% of the time, including people have had near-death
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  Speaker 2: experiences in which they met a deceased relative and they
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  Speaker 2: didn't know the person had died. So they met someone
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  Speaker 2: who was so recently deceased that they had no conscious
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  Speaker 2: knowledge that the person had passed. So again, that's very
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  Speaker 2: common throughout these experiences kind of cross-culturally. And I think
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  Speaker 2: another one that's common is the experience of a light,
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  Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken. That's another common one.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, and often the light is taken for some proxy
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  Speaker 3: for God, that it seems to be not just a light,
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  Speaker 3: but the light.
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  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. And then the other interesting, you know, there are
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  Speaker 2: some ways that culture or individual stuff shapes these. So
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  Speaker 2: although there are these universal components, there are these, you know,
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  Speaker 2: kind of cultural differences in the way, you know, so
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  Speaker 2: for some people see Jesus, for example, and in a
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  Speaker 2: different cultural context, you might see something else. But they
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  Speaker 2: do have these core commonalities and some people, include the
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  Speaker 2: out-of-body experience that that you guys were both talking about
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  Speaker 2: although not all of them but there are these in
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  Speaker 2: which you know the person reports i was i was
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  Speaker 2: above my body watching you try to get my heart
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  Speaker 2: restarted and you know joseph as you alluded there are
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  Speaker 2: some cases where what they saw has been corroborated i
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  Speaker 2: read about one case where um the man was, you know,
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  Speaker 2: up at the ceiling in the ER or wherever he
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  Speaker 2: was being operated on. And he saw on top of
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  Speaker 2: an eight foot cabinet, there was a quarter and he
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  Speaker 2: saw that it was a quarter from 1985. And he
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  Speaker 2: reported that and they went and they got a ladder
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  Speaker 2: and they climbed up and they got the quarter and
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  Speaker 2: it was from 1985. So, and there's, I mean, there's
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  Speaker 2: a number of these that have been, you know, corroborated
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  Speaker 2: and it's quite extraordinary. This is a fascinating area. And
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  Speaker 2: of course, one of the other important things to look
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  Speaker 2: at is what they call after effects, which is how
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  Speaker 2: people change after these. Not everyone reports big changes, but
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  Speaker 2: the majority of people report substantial changes, including the number
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  Speaker 2: one change is they lose their fear of death. And
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  Speaker 2: other changes, people become more compassionate, more curious. A lot
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  Speaker 2: of people leave organized religion, not all of them, but
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  Speaker 2: some of them do, because they feel that organized religion
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  Speaker 2: is too constrained and doesn't accurately convey what they feel
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  Speaker 2: they now know. So they become more spiritual, but maybe
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  Speaker 2: less religious.
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  Speaker 4: You know, I'm thinking about how this concern with mortality
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  Speaker 4: is so very, very deeply human. You know, is there
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  Speaker 4: life after death? And going back to the ancient rites
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  Speaker 4: in Greece of the ritual of Eleusis, which lasted for
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  Speaker 4: a thousand years, and that there was a year's worth
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  Speaker 4: at least of preparation for this ceremony, and anyone could
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  Speaker 4: partake as long as he or she spoke Greek, whether
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  Speaker 4: a noble woman or a nobleman or a slave. And
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  Speaker 4: that this is exactly the outcome from this special ritual
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  Speaker 4: where people walked the 13 miles from Athens to Eleusis
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  Speaker 4: and were, you know, there was a trance-like state induced.
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  Speaker 4: There may have been some sort of hallucinogenic component to this.
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  Speaker 4: In addition to the year's worth of spiritual preparation, So
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  Speaker 4: this was the outcome also of people lost their fear
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  Speaker 4: of death. So I just want to, you know, these
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  Speaker 4: are experiences, near-death experiences and ritual experiences that give us,
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  Speaker 4: can give us the reassurance that there is something more.
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  Speaker 2: Well, and related to that too, Deb, I'm thinking about
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  Speaker 2: the episode we did somewhat recently on psychedelics because psychedelic
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  Speaker 2: experiences also sometimes alleviate an intense fear of death. So
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  Speaker 2: whenever we have this experience, a kind of an intimation,
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  Speaker 2: like you said, that there's something more, it's very reassuring
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  Speaker 2: and how fascinating that this can occur in this particular
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  Speaker 2: fashion on the threshold of biological death and of course
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  Speaker 2: I'm assuming that NDEs are more common now and more
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  Speaker 2: commonly reported because probably there are greater numbers of people
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  Speaker 2: who can become resuscitated with modern medical procedures but I
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  Speaker 2: imagine there's I imagine this has always been part of
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  Speaker 2: the human experience and that these experiences have informed our
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  Speaker 2: understanding of the afterlife and what we think we know
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  Speaker 2: about religion and that kind of thing. So I think
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  Speaker 2: this is a central part.
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  Speaker 3: Relative to researchers, there's also this enormous question of consciousness
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  Speaker 3: not being contained exclusively in the body. that the brain
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  Speaker 3: may be something of the machinery of how consciousness interacts
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  Speaker 3: with the physical body, but that consciousness itself may transcend
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  Speaker 3: the brain and be able to function without the body.
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  Speaker 3: And for a number of scientific researchers, that's the question
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  Speaker 3: that they're asking. What is consciousness? What's required for consciousness
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  Speaker 3: to and near-death experiences are bringing to the forefront is
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  Speaker 3: at least anecdotal evidence that consciousness is not limited to
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  Speaker 3: the physical body.
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  Speaker 4: Which I think your story, Lisa, really illustrates very, very
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  Speaker 4: well of the man who had an outer body experience
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  Speaker 4: and could report that there was a quarter lying way
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  Speaker 4: up on top of a cabinet So there are many
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  Speaker 4: experiences of this type that are verified and call into
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  Speaker 4: question just what you're talking about, Joseph, of is our being,
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  Speaker 4: our consciousness, our sense of self limited to physiology?
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  Speaker 3: And this is often, I think, connected to why people
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  Speaker 3: no longer have the fear of death because for many
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  Speaker 3: who have a rather materialistic viewpoint, The concern is that
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  Speaker 3: when the body dies, my personality, my consciousness will cease
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  Speaker 3: to exist. There is simply a void. So the near-death
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  Speaker 3: experiences suggest, again anecdotally, that that is not true and
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  Speaker 3: that consciousness is not dependent on the body. And when
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  Speaker 3: that's a lived experience and not just a theoretical experience,
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  Speaker 3: that's what seems to give people the confidence that The
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  Speaker 3: death of the body is not the end.
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  Speaker 2: You know, for most people that have a near-death experience, too,
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  Speaker 2: it's incredibly, like, blissful. It's, you know, realer than real.
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  Speaker 2: And it's so, you know, they see things. Some near-death
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  Speaker 2: experiences have been reported among those people who have been
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  Speaker 2: blind from birth. And then they suddenly have vision and
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  Speaker 2: can see things. And so they're rapturous, many of them. Although...
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  Speaker 2: There are small numbers of reports of people having really
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  Speaker 2: unpleasant near-death experiences. I imagine that those are talked about less,
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  Speaker 2: but they are out there. But I think it, so
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  Speaker 2: it's not only, it's, you know, a lot of people report,
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  Speaker 2: and we'll see this in Jung's report too, it's like,
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  Speaker 2: you know, they're told, we hear this story of, you're
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  Speaker 2: told it's not time, you have to go back. And
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  Speaker 2: often there's this, like, no, I don't want to go back.
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  Speaker 2: Don't make me go back.
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  Speaker 4: And that happened to Jung.
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  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 4: He had a near-death experience, and he was very angry
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  Speaker 4: at his doctor for bringing him back. He really protested
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  Speaker 4: having to return.
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  Speaker 2: You know, I think one of the Jungian concepts we're
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  Speaker 2: dancing around here is this notion that Jung called the
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  Speaker 2: relativization of the ego. And it's a sort of a
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  Speaker 2: big term that basically means that we have an experience
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  Speaker 2: that lets us know that our ego is only a
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  Speaker 2: tiny part of us. So it's often in relationship to
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  Speaker 2: the self. And we can have this relativization of the
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  Speaker 2: ego in many ways. We can have it just because
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  Speaker 2: we have a big ego plan that fails and that's like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: I guess not everything, I can't always have my way.
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  Speaker 2: But Something like this is kind of next level. It's
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  Speaker 2: a real, you know, Jung said that it's the approach
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  Speaker 2: to the numinous that heals. And a lot of these
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  Speaker 2: NDs are incredibly numinous.
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  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: And so it would be that experience of coming back
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  Speaker 2: and really knowing in a very visceral way that your
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  Speaker 2: ego is not all there is.
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  Speaker 4: Let's just go back and say for listeners what you
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  Speaker 4: mean by the self, which is what Jung called that transpersonal,
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  Speaker 4: transcendent reality that is often imaged in religions as a
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  Speaker 4: divine figure, the Buddha, the Christ, various other kinds of images,
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  Speaker 4: so that we have a way of envisioning it. But
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  Speaker 4: it is that which is not I. And because this
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  Speaker 4: is archetypal, it has a dark side as well as
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  Speaker 4: a light side. So when you said, Lisa, that sometimes
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  Speaker 4: there are experiences that are really difficult for people, that
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  Speaker 4: that too is part of the self of, we're called
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  Speaker 4: upon in life, not only through near-death experiences, to encounter that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great framing, Deb. I think, you know, if
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  Speaker 2: you read some of these negative reports, or even if
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  Speaker 2: you look at, you know, some people have negative experiences
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  Speaker 2: with psilocybin or other psychedelics.
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  Speaker 4: Exactly.
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  Speaker 2: It's like, oh yeah, there's the dark side of the self, right? It's, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it's going to kind of pick you up and chew
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  Speaker 2: you up and spit you out.
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  Speaker 4: And so those experiences, I mean, we are called upon to,
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  Speaker 4: To be able to stand against that, to be able
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  Speaker 4: to hold on to a sense of self in the
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  Speaker 4: face of something that is greater, which is, you know,
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  Speaker 4: in a way exactly what happened to Job.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: When he finally, you know, goes out and says, you know,
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  Speaker 4: all these things have happened to me. And he demands
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  Speaker 4: of Yahweh, you know, sort of, in effect, demanding an explanation.
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  Speaker 4: I was a good person and I did everything I
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  Speaker 4: was supposed to do, and what is all this about?
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  Speaker 4: And the answer basically, you know, the words are, you know,
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  Speaker 4: where were you when I created the heavens and the earth?
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  Speaker 4: I'm paraphrasing. That it is simply the recognition of something
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  Speaker 4: greater in that moment appears in its dark and uncaring aspect.
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  Speaker 4: And Job has enough integrity as a personality, as a
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  Speaker 4: human being, To be able to stand in that and
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  Speaker 4: stand against it and not be swept away by it.
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  Speaker 4: I think that's really important is what do we do
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  Speaker 4: as individuals in the face of something greater? And it's
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  Speaker 4: wonderful when it's benign and magical and sweeps us away.
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  Speaker 4: And I'm thinking about our podcast and what's out there
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  Speaker 4: in the culture with mind-altering substances. But in the meantime,
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  Speaker 4: we have our lives to live, making us have enough wholeness,
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  Speaker 4: enough integrity, enough sense of self to have that while
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  Speaker 4: we are having other experiences, including near-death experiences.
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  Speaker 3: And I think that one of the signs that the
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  Speaker 3: ego has been properly relativized is that Somebody has access
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  Speaker 3: to reverence.
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  Speaker 4: That's perfect. Yeah, that's great.
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  Speaker 2: That feels so spot on. Thank you for that.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Because, Joseph, I'm so glad you said that because there
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: are people who lack that, and I can feel how....
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  Speaker 3: You're reverent.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but just that there's a kind of psycho-spiritual sickness
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  Speaker 2: that goes along with that inability to feel reverence and awe,
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  Speaker 2: you know?
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  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: It's like those are some of the most important things
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  Speaker 2: to be able to feel. So thank you for that.
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  Speaker 4: And that is what Job experienced also. So light or dark,
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  Speaker 4: reverence is important. And of course, the prereq, so to speak,
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  Speaker 4: is developing a strong, flexible, well-adapted ego that is able
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  Speaker 4: to remain present for the other, for these experiences.
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  Speaker 3: So I think we're leaning into that question of how
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  Speaker 3: might these experiences change someone? And so as you were saying, Lisa,
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  Speaker 3: that the theology or doxology that they have inherited from
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: the religions of their childhood don't include enough of their
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: experiential dimensions. And so then they begin to seek, but
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: also self-define these inner spiritual worlds. and in a sense
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: create their own paradigm around that, which goes to something
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: that Jung wrote about in terms of what is religion
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: and how can we understand religious organizations. Often what occurs
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  Speaker 3: is that an extraordinary person which in the Catholic tradition
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: we might call a saint, has a profound internal spiritual
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  Speaker 3: experience and then is able to communicate that to others
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: in such a compelling way that they too seek, often
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: through imitation, a way to cultivate a similar experience. So
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: even though it may seem strange to say that Somebody
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: has a near-death experience, and in a way, they have
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: formed or are forming their own religion around that. That
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: actually is how religion, in terms of technique and theology,
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: in fact, has already occurred.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, I think that's... Yeah, you know, there's this
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: stuff about after effects is really quite interesting. But one
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  Speaker 2: of the things, Joseph, that I think relates to what
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: you're talking about is how people are responded to when
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: they first confide. So if the first confiding experience is, oh,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: that's crazy, or what's wrong with you, or even, oh,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: my gosh, that's evil, because it doesn't match with maybe
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: your religious beliefs or something. it can be very difficult
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: for the person to integrate the experience. But if the
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: first confiding is met with, you know, interest and curiosity
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: and kind of affirming, then the person has an easier
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  Speaker 2: time integrating it. But just, you know, just as you're saying,
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  Speaker 2: I think, you know, there's this thing that sort of
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: shatters your understanding of what might be. And then you
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  Speaker 2: have to come back and make sense of it. And
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: I imagine that, you know, You're absolutely right. My guess
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: is that people who have experienced NDEs throughout history have
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: come back and made sense of it by either knitting
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: it into an existing theology or even creating a new theology.
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  Speaker 2: Because we have to have a way of trying to
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: understand this. You know, I just want to say I
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: was talking about the common elements. I knew I forgot something.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Life review is a common element.
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  Speaker 4: I'm back on, you know, your concept of the relativization
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  Speaker 4: of the ego, that we do need to make meaning
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: out of it. And yet these experiences will never fit
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  Speaker 4: into the narrow confines of our embodied day-to-day experience. Ego
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: is just too small to really be able to render this.
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  Speaker 4: So we tell there are stories. People tell what they experienced.
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  Speaker 4: There are stories in religious texts of transcendent experiences that
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: may not be near-death experience, but something like Moses and
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: his vision of the burning bush on the mountain. It
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: certainly was not a literal burning bush. And so there
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  Speaker 4: are so many experiences that are beyond ego, beyond our
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: ability to really confine in terms of our sensory experience
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: or in terms of, quote, science. There's no chemical formula
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: for this.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: And as you were saying, the struggle to find a
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: way to embody, to language, to imagine the experience is
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: necessary for the ego to be able to metabolize it.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: This is the same struggle we have with remembering our dreams,
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: that we have some kind of non-ordinary experience in a
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: dream state And if we can't find language to contain
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: it or to bridge our ego experience to the extraordinary experience,
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: it's more likely that we will forget it, that it
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: will slip out of our hands. So sometimes people that
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: have had near-death experiences do launch on a campaign to
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: find language. Does Tibetan Buddhism talk about this? Do the
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: ancient Greeks talk about it? Is there something in the
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: mystical dimension of Catholicism or Islam, that can give me
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: poetry language images to try to hold on to the experience.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: Because that holding on allows it to become part of
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: the structure of the personality.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Gives you a way to think about it.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah. But I really like what you said, Joseph, of
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: non-ordinary experience as an umbrella term. for near-death experience, out-of-body experience,
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: and dreams. That everybody has dreams, and they are non-ordinary experiences.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: And there are lots of experiences that religious figures have reported.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: Muhammad received the Quran from an angel and had it
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: written down word for word. So there are so many
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: non-ordinary kinds of experience that we do translate into language
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: or religious text or relating the experience, capturing some aspect
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: of the experience in ritual so as to make it
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: more accessible to the conscious mind and to others.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: You know, it feels like what we're backing into is
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: this relationship between near-death experiences and what Jung called the
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: religious function of the psyche. And what he meant by
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: that is that we're wired to relate to the transpersonal.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: And Jung, you know, in a lot of his early writings,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: he stopped short of saying, well, the transpersonal exists. But
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: what he says is we certainly have a function in
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: the psyche that is designed to relate to it. And
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, this is a little different, the
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: entry point that we're here today. But we are wondering
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: about how the psyche relates to this, you know, kind
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: of transcendent, supernormal experience. And then what do we do
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: with that on a psychological, personal level and even on
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: a cultural level? In our culture, there is a real
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: tendency to distance and maybe even demean these kinds of experiences.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: There is a lot of interest in them, but they also,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: you know, it tends to kind of feel like a
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: bit of a fringe research area, I think. What are
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: we talking about here? Because some of what is fascinating
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: found the implications really go against kind of material, scientific
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: view of what you were saying, Joseph, what consciousness is.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: And this goes to also the great tension between Freud
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: and Jung, that Freud had a very concrete, worldly view
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: of what psychological health would mean, that the quote-unquote fantasies
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: that Jung was reporting would have been analyzed in such
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: a way that they would have been dismissed as some
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: kind of an avoidance of reality, and that we should
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: be keeping our feet on the ground, our eyes should
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: be in this horizontal plane, and that's where the adaptive
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: good stuff for the ego lives. And Jung was having
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: extraordinary experiences even in childhood through the mediumistic spiritualist community
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: around him, but also his own rich inner life that
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: was also uncanny and not like what other people were saying.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: So the whole birth of Jungian psychology comes from this
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: interest and validation of the extraordinary experiences that human beings
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: have had and continue to have.
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And there it is. Whether we like it or
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: we don't like it, whether it fits into... our Western
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: cultural paradigm of science and reality and all of our
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: inheritance from the Enlightenment, or not, there it is. And
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: other times and other cultures have valued these experiences much more,
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: such as the ritual from ancient Greece that I mentioned
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: of the rites at Eleusis or Eleusis. And there's something
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: in today's culture that resists this despite the painstaking recording
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: and validation and so on done by the NDE Research Foundation.
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: Here it is.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: In the shamanic traditions, often what marks someone as a
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: shaman is that they seem to have died and come back.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: And when they came back, they also retained an access
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: to that other world. And perhaps somewhere else in our
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: talk today, we can discuss the fact that many people
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: come back and they have what people would say are
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: extraordinary psychic abilities and sensitivities that they did not have before.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: and I have a number of thoughts about that.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Great. Yeah, because that is one of the reported after-effects
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: that people have clairvoyance or other kind of parapsychological experiences.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: So we could posit that in addition to the well-recorded
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: five senses, We also have an ability or capability for
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: psychic experience, psychic receptivity. And heaven knows that has been
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: reported and recorded throughout time.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: In the Western mystery tradition, they refer to it as
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: the awakening of the inner sensorum. We have outer senses
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: and we have inner senses. And whether it's through tragedy
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: like a near-death experience or or through rigorous techniques that
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: we can begin to cultivate this inner sensorum and then
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: become aware of these inner worlds.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Let's dive into Jung's experience, if that's okay. So this
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: is from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, his autobiography. And it's a
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: little bit of a long passage, but it's really fascinating.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: So Jung was 68 years old during the time that
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: he's recording here. At the beginning of 1944, I broke
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: my foot, and this misadventure was followed by a heart attack.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: In a state of unconsciousness, I experienced deliriums and visions,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: which must have begun when I hung on the edge
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: of death and was being given oxygen and camphor injections.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: The images were so tremendous that I myself concluded that
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: I was close to death. My nurse afterward told me,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: it was as if you were surrounded by a bright glow.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: That was a phenomenon she had sometimes observed in the dying,
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: she added. I had reached the outermost limit and do
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: not know whether I was in a dream or an ecstasy.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: At any rate, extremely strange things began to happen to me.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: It seemed to me that I was high up in space.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Far below, I saw the globe of the earth bathed
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: sea in the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon,
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: and in the distance ahead of me, the subcontinent of India.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: My field of vision did not include the whole earth,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: but its global shape was plainly distinguishable, and its outlines
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: In many places, the globe seemed colored or spotted dark green,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: like oxidized silver. Far away to the left lay a
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: broad expanse, the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia. It was as
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: though the silver of the earth had there assumed a
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back,
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: as in the upper left of a map, I could
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: the right at all. I knew that I was on
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: the point of departing from the earth. Later, I discovered
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: how high in space one would have to be to
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: have so extensive a view, approximately a thousand miles. The
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: sight of the earth from this height was the most
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: glorious thing I had ever seen. After contemplating it for
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: a while, I turned around. I had been standing with
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: my back to the Indian Ocean, as it were, and
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: my face to the north. Then it seemed to me
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: that I made a turn to the south. Something new
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: entered my field of vision. A short distance away, I
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone like
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: a meteorite. It was about the size of my house
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: or even bigger. It was floating in space and I
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: myself was floating in space. I had seen similar stones
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: dark black. An entrance led into a small antechamber. To
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: the right of the entrance, a Hindu sat silently in
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: lotus posture upon a stone bench. He wore a white gown,
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: and I knew that he expected me. Two steps led
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: up to his antechamber, and inside on the left was
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: the gate to the temple. Innumerable tiny niches, each with
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: a saucer-like concavity filled with coconut oil and small burning wicks,
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: surrounded the door with a wreath of bright flames. I
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: had once actually seen this when I visited the Temple
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: of the Holy Tooth at Candy in Ceylon. The gate
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: had been framed by several rows of burning oil lamps
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: of this sort. As I approached the steps leading up
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence fell away or was stripped
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: from me, an extremely painful process. Nevertheless, something remained. It
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: was as if I now carried along with me everything
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: around me. I might also say it was with me
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: and I was it. I consisted of all that, so
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: to speak. I consisted of my own history, and I
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: felt with great certainty, this is what I am. I
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: am this bundle of what has been and what has
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: been accomplished. This experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty,
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: but at the same time of great fullness. There was
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: an objective form. I was what I had been and lived.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: At first, the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: stripped or pillaged, but suddenly that became of no consequence.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Everything seemed to be past. What remained was a fait
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: accompli without any reference back to what had been. There
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: was no longer any regret that something had dropped away
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: or had been taken away. On the contrary, I had
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: everything that I was, and that was everything. Something else
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: engaged my attention. As I approached the temple, I had
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: the certainty that I was about to enter an illuminated
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: room and would meet there all those people to whom
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: I belong in reality. There I would at last understand,
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: this too was a certainty, what historical nexus I or
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: my life fitted into. I would know what had been
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: before me, why I had come into being and where
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: my life was flowing. My life as I lived it
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: had often seemed to me like a story that has
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: proceeding and succeeding text was missing. My life seemed to
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: have been snipped out of a long chain of events,
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: and many questions had remained unanswered. Why had I taken
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: this course? Why had I brought these particular assumptions with me?
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: What had I made of them? What will follow? I
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: felt sure that I would receive an answer to all
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: these questions as soon as I entered the rock temple.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: There I would learn why everything had been thus and
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: not otherwise. There I would meet the people who knew
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: the answer to my question about what had been before
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: and what would come after. While I was thinking over
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: these matters, something happened that caught my attention. From below,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: from the direction of Europe, an image floated up. It
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: was my doctor, Dr. H., or rather his likeness, framed
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: by a golden chain or a golden laurel wreath. I
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: knew at once, aha, this is my doctor, of course,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: the one who has been treating me. But now he
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: is coming in his primal form, as a Basileus of Kos.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: In life, he had been an avatar of this Basileus,
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: this temporal embodiment of the primal form, which has existed
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: from the beginning. Now he is appearing in that primal form.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Presumably I too was in my primal form, though this
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: was something I did not observe but simply took for granted.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: As he stood before me, a mute exchange of thought
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: took place between us.
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: Dr.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: H had been delegated by the earth to deliver a
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: message to me, to tell me there was a protest
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: against my going away. I had no right to leave
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: the earth and must return. The moment I heard that,
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: The vision ceased. I was profoundly disappointed. For now, it
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: all seemed to have been for nothing. The painful process
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: of defoliation had been in vain, and I was not
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: allowed to enter the temple to join the people in
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: whose company I belonged. In reality, a good three weeks
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: were still to pass before I could truly make up
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: my mind to live again. I could not eat because
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: all food repelled me. The view of city and mountains
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: from my sickbed seemed to me like a painted curtain
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: with black holes in it or a tattered sheet of
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: newspaper full of photographs that meant nothing. Disappointed, I thought,
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: now I must return to the box system again, for
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: it seemed to me as if behind the horizon of
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: the cosmos, a three-dimensional world had been artificially built up
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: in which each person sat by himself in a little box.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: and now I should have to convince myself all over
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: again that this was important. Life and the whole world
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: struck me as a prison, and it bothered me beyond
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: measure that I should again be finding all that quite
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: in order. I had been so glad to shed it all,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: and now it had come about that I, along with
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: everyone else, would again be hung up in a box
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: by a thread. While I had floated in space, I
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: had been weightless, and there had been nothing tugging at me,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: and now all that was to be a thing of
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: the past. I felt violent resistance to my doctor because
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: he had brought me back to life. At the same time,
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: I was worried about him. His life is in danger,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: for heaven's sakes. He has appeared to me in his
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: primal form. When anybody attains this form, it means he
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: is going to die, for already he belongs to the
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: greater company. Suddenly, the terrifying thought came to me that Dr.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: H would have to die in my stead. I tried
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: my best to talk to him about it, but he
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: did not understand me. Then I became angry with him.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Why does he always pretend he doesn't know he is
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: a Basileus of Kos, and that he had already assumed
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: his primal form? He wants to make me believe that
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: he doesn't know. That irritated me. My wife reproved me
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: for being so unfriendly to him. She was right, but
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: at the time I was angry with him for stubbornly
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: refusing to speak of all that had passed between us
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: in my vision. Damn it all, he ought to watch
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: his step. He has no right to be so reckless.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: I want to tell him to take care of himself.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: I was firmly convinced that his life was in jeopardy.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: In actual fact, I was his last patient. On April 4th, 1944,
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: I still remember the exact date, I was allowed to
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: sit up on the edge of my bed for the
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: first time since the beginning of my illness. And on
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: this same day, Dr. H took to his bed and
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: did not leave it again. I heard that he was
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: having intermittent attacks of fever. Soon afterward, he died of septicemia.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: He was a good doctor. There was something of the
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: genius about him. Otherwise, he would not have appeared to
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: me as a Prince of Kos. I mean, when Jung
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: has a near-death experience, he really just, you know, pulls
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: out all the stops.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: Lisa, where is that in the works in case people
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: want to find it again?
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: It's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and it's right at the beginning
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: of the chapter called Visions, which in my book begins
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: on page 289.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: So there are several things in his near-death experience that
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: we also see in the growing body of literature. One
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: is that being free of the under-functioning brain and the
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: distraction of illness, consciousness is much clearer that the ability
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: to remember, the ability to experience, the ability to think
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: and to make sense is far superior to what it
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: was when we were kind of trapped in our troubled
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: flesh or what some mystics call the pelt. wearing this
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: pelt until we take it off. The other thing that
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: you had mentioned earlier is Jung had that experience of
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: not wanting to return, that there was so much promise
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: for him. And for Jung particularly, we can find in
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: his writings and in Memories, Dreams, and Reflection a lifelong
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: lament of not feeling understood.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: And here was at least a felt sense that he
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: was right on the verge of finding his people, people
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: that he had enough connection to that he could be
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: known and know. And how much he longed for that.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: And of course, we all long for that. But for Jung,
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: it was a place of just tremendous suffering.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: You know, as I was reading that part, I was
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: having this thought. I mean, You know, like someday we'll
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: do an episode about Jung the person, but he was
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: a really unusual person. And, you know, there's sort of like,
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: who would you want to have dinner with? I don't
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: know that I would ever want to meet Jung. I
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: think it would just be too freaking intimidating because he
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: was so like just beyond brilliant. Right. And it's not
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: like I think the guy is a saint, but there
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: was this like, I think I have the same question. Like,
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: where did he come from? Who was he that he
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: came down to this earth and just kind of was
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: able to access all of this stuff? And so I
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: can see why he wanted to get into that temple
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: and figure out what was this all about? I don't
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: think I'm going to have that experience when I pass.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: I'm rather more ordinary. But yeah, it's a mystery. He's
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: a bit of a mystery, and he must have been
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: a bit of a mystery to himself.
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: What I'm aware of here is the image-making function of
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: the psyche, of this capacity that we have that Jung
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: had far, far more than most of us to experience
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: the depths, to experience another realm. And, you know, that
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: I could imagine that, you know, there might be people
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: out there that say, well, that's not really true. I mean,
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: he entered a meteorite that was his meteorite, and there's
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: a guru sitting there, and that doesn't sound right. And
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: that's exactly what happens with these kinds of experiences when
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: we want to bring them back down to Earth our
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: pelt covered selves. I love, I love that idea, Joseph, uh, that,
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: that those experiences don't translate in, in such a concrete
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: literal sense to our waking life experience, uh, on earth.
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: And that makes them easier to discount of, uh, for
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: people that say, well, then, um, Wouldn't everybody experience it
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: that way? You know, why doesn't everybody report entering a meteorite?
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: So there's something about the rupture between consciousness, ego, waking life,
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: and these kinds of experiences that make them tantalizing and
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: yet difficult to really integrate into our known reality.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: You know, one of the things I find fascinating about
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: Jung's vision, and I didn't clock this until I started
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: looking at this for this episode, but he gives a
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: very detailed description of what the earth looked like from
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: a thousand feet in the air. And now, you know,
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: we read that and we're like, oh yeah, we've all
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: seen the pictures, right? But the first picture of earth
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: from space, the first one that was sort of like
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: had the, I'm just looking it up, like the first
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: photograph of Earth as a whole, which it is surrounded
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: by that kind of silver blue light. The first one
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: was 1972. There were earlier ones. The earliest one was
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: from 1946, but it's very rough and grainy and just,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of, but that was still, this was
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: still two years before that. So Jung was, and even
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: that sense of like, oh, the snow-capped mountains and the
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: way the desert looks kind of reddish gold. I mean,
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: I think that these are That's the way it looks.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: And here Jung had access to that somehow, which, I mean,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: maybe that's just what one would have imagined, but it's tantalizing.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: So let's lean a little bit into some of the
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: kind of occult and mystical thinking about the relationship between
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: near-death experiences and the various techniques that religious and spiritual
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: traditions have used to try to step into this other
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: world without the trauma of a near-death experience. One of
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: the things that modern occultists are very curious about is
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: the role of carbon dioxide in changing brain function permanently.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: So it's a very interesting thing that Pranayama, which is
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: a control of breath, has a number of miraculous kind
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: of benefits, but particularly can induce very powerful altered states
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: of consciousness, and there is a claim that certain spiritual
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: capacities can be awakened through a disciplined use of breath control.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: One of the primary tools of pranayama is training the body,
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: to slow down the breathing process. For instance, there's a
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: technique just called a four-count breath, to breathe in over
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: four seconds, to hold the breath for four seconds, to
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: exhale for four seconds, and hold the breath out for
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: four seconds. There's a number of benefits to that regulating process,
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: but in the yogic traditions, one would seek to expand
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: that frame so that one could do that same pattern
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: for 30 seconds, for instance. And this ability to tolerate
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: oxygen deprivation through these disciplines also seems to change certain
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: brain functions and perhaps even brain structures, similar to what
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: happens when people are in near-death experiences, but not anywhere
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: nearly as severely. So there's a certain mystery about that
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: sustained CO2 level that seems to change how the brain
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: perceives the phenomena that it can access. The second thing
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: that I think is very interesting from this mystical tradition
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: is that near-death experiences and how they change people are
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: very similar to kundalini experiences, and how people say that
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: they are also changed. What is often not discussed, but
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: is an idea reserved often for initiates, is that in
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: the final moments of death, the kundalini energy is liberated
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: from the sacrum, rises up the spine as it does
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: for adepts, And as the Kundalini reaches beyond the body
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: and connects to those transpersonal centers, the soul is escorted
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: out of the body and into the larger world of consciousness.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: This is often why those who have had near-death experiences
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: also describe a kind of ecstasy. And those who work
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: in environments where people are observed dying, the dying also
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: seem to have something of an ecstatic experience as they
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: are transitioning out of the body. And any of you,
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: like myself, who have done a lot of work with
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: kundalini work, also when the kundalini rises, experience a kind
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: of ecstatic awakening. So, through spiritual disciplines, we can also learn,
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: if we're predisposed to to bring this same transformational energy
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: up out of the sacrum in a highly controlled way
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: without actually needing to be at the end of life
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: and yet cultivate certain experiences and certain changes in the
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: body which allow those experiences then to be accessed. So
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: this goes to, I think, a very important field in
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: occult and mystical consideration, that it's the body that needs
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: to change in order to have certain capacities activated. And
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: whether that happens through trauma or whether that happens through technique,
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: that something needs to occur. When we think about it
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: as a kind of spiritual technology, I often think about
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: it as a second puberty, that there is similarly a
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: radical change, particularly in glandular function, but also in other
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: areas of the brain that are just as remarkable as
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: happened when we were 15 years old. And this is
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: why the books of the dead are also the books
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: of initiation. The Egyptian book of the dead, the Tibetan
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: book of the dead. are describing things that are experienced
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: when one is liberated from the limits of the physical
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: senses and can retain consciousness as we move into these
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: non-ordinary states. And as you were saying, Deb, it may
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: very well be that with the growing accessibility of psychedelics,
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: individuals who are not predisposed to spiritual disciplines and thank
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: goodness are not in these traumatic circumstances, can begin to
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: get glimpses of this inner place. And as we were
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: saying earlier, afford themselves the transformations of attitude and the
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: benefits of that in terms of the rest of their
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: life journey, one of which is this triumph over Thanatos.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: And Freud said, and this is at the basis of
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: all the analytic traditions, is that every form of neurotic
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: suffering is in some way a collapse into the fear
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: of death. And that the goal is to be able
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: to realign to love or eros. There is love. And
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: I think, while that may seem simplistic, we are in
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: this realm of very similar consideration. And it's not a decision,
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: but it's a lived discovery.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: It seems to me that we're talking about some of
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: the very biggest things that we could be talking about. So,
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a way that I feel a little
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: speechless about. but certainly it invites that embrace of love
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: that you're talking about, Joseph. And, you know, I'm struck
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: by what the after effects of Jung's near-death experience were.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: And in some ways, I don't think it was a
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: big surprise to him in some sense, because it seems
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: so in line with.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: His interests in waking life throughout his whole life. By
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: the way, there's been research done trying to figure out
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: if there are any common elements among people who have
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: NDEs and they could find none. So it's not that
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: if you're a more spiritual person, you're more likely to
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: have one or anything like that. But here is Jung
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: having this experience that in some sense, very aligned with
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: his interests throughout his life. And then I'm thinking of
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: his famous BBC interview that he did later after this,
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: in which the interviewer says, Dr. Jung, do you believe
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: in God? And he takes a minute and he says,
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: I don't believe, I know. And I'm thinking, well, if
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: you had an experience like that, of course you know.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: Perhaps this is a good time to transition into a dream.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: Our dreamer is a 29-year-old male who works as a
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: project manager, and he has titled his dream, Trapped in
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: the Company. I am the newest addition to a historic
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: preservation crew, improving temples and schools of a bygone people
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: and culture in the Sierra Nevada mountains. These spaces are
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: empty to the naked eye. Each night, spirits... and creatures
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: come to haunt us, to harass and molest us. We
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: are not welcome here. I am not directly bothered. However,
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: as we make our deeper way into the Sierra, the
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: nights grow more dangerous as we sleep at the job site.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: Some members of the outfit, more senior than me, abandon
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: the job. They face ridicule from the other bosses who
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: choose to continue onward. I'm scared and question my own
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: allegiance to the company and why I'm even here at
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: all as time goes on. A result of the nightly
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: hauntings are the breakouts of severe acne on my colleagues' faces.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: They are bruised, irritated, and increasingly unrecognizable as each day passes.
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: I ask why this is happening. I only receive cryptic responses.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: No one tells me exactly what is upset with us,
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: exactly what it is we appear to be disturbing at
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: a profound level. I feel increasingly trapped, a hostage of
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: this company's mission. No one will come clean about what
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: we're doing here. Frustration and fear grow over the life
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: of the dream to no resolve. And for context, he writes,
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: I am increasingly frustrated by an ideology that has entered
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: my workplace in the last three years. I feel an
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: increasing expectation to perform in accordance with this new ideology,
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: which I disagree with personally. The main feelings in the
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: dream for him were being trapped and being denied the
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: truth of the situation. And he adds a few associations.
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: Contractor work, he associates with animosity about the nature of
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: being dispensable as a temporary employee. and excavation and renovation
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: of something misunderstood. He associates with a disdain for the
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: arrogance he perceives in those who think they know how
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: to improve something that they have little or no experience with.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: Um, I have, I have, I have big reactions to
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: this dream.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: Go for it.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Uh, so first of all, I think it's a pretty
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: profound dream and it strikes me that it's one of
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: those dreams that's possibly for the collective and not just
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: this individual, you know, they're well, where to start. First
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: of all, his comment about the kind of arrogance of
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: people trying to, um, fix something that's really ancient. So I,
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: I kind of got that in the dream too. It's like, Whoa,
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: these are temples and you're desecrating them somehow, you know,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: and some element in the temple is responding to that.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: And in terms of ideology, which I think is everywhere
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: in our culture right now, I think a lot of
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: people are kind of mired in ideology. And the thing
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: about it is when that happens to you, you usually
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: don't see it. Because you think you're just right. And
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm saying that being totally aware that I
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: could be trapped in an ideology that I don't see, right?
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, I try to be vigilant about that, but
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: it's very hard not to be. So I think that there's,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: you know, ideology of all kinds in our society right now,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: really holding sway. And there's actually something about this dream
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: that reminds me of many of the dreams in this
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: book called The Third Reich of Dreams by, the name
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: will come to me, oh, Berat, B-E-R-A-D-T. So this, I
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: think her first name was Charlotte Berat. Anyway, she was
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: a journalist in Nazi Germany and she was not a psychologist.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: She went around and she collected people's dreams, right? like
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: during Nazification. It's a really interesting book. It's very expensive
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: now because it's out of print, but I've read the
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: whole thing. She doesn't interpret the dream psychologically, but there
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: is this sense of kind of something stifling, that almost
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: like the psyche can't give full expression to something. Something's
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: being trapped and stuffed in, you know, and the sort
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: of sense you get from reading these dreams, because they're
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: actually most of them, like most of them are quite boring, actually.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: And you get the sense that what was true then
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: was that the imposition of Nazi ideology was so stifling
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: that it even stifled people's dreams. So there's a little
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: sort of flavor of that in this dream, that something
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: is really amiss, and it seems to be amiss. I'm
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: going to tend to see this the same way the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: dreamer sees it. I believe this dream is commenting on
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: an outer world experience of feeling stifled by an ideology
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: that the thing about ideology is it usually cuts us
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: off from the past. If you think about major ideological movements,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: like Maoism, for example, the ideology during the French Revolution, or,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: you know, just It either connects you with a false past,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: like Nazism did, or it cuts you off and renders
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: sort of irrelevant the real past. You know, you could
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: think about people pulling down statues in that way, too.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: So there's something, there is a past here. There are
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: ancient temples and schools, but they're being improved.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: I agree with you, Lisa, and I'm thinking about the
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: paradox here of the cognitive dissonance, rather, right in the
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: initial setting of the dream. The newest addition to a
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: historic preservation crew, quote, improving, unquote, temples and schools of
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: a bygone people and culture. Well, if you're a part
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: of a historic preservation crew, your mission is to be...
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: attentive and devoted to what the intent of the bygone
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: peoples and culture was. You don't improve it. You don't
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: make modifications. And people on archaeological digs use these tiny
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: little brushes to brush off sand or dirt so as
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: not to damage in even the slightest way an object
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: or a new layer of the dig. It is being
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: preserved and honored. And that's not what's going on in
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: this dream. And there it is right in the initial situation,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: the psychic situation, which is, it's not historic preservation, it's alteration.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: And that is what ideology does. It tells us this
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: is good or right or valuable. And It ain't necessarily so.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: It's what we want it to be with whatever kind
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: of ego dominance is taking place on the part of
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: a group, creators of an ideology or a culture, that
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: there are essential truths that must not be questioned.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: I can really align with this. Possibility that the dream
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: is a collective commentary, and I think it's remarkable when
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: sometimes people dream on behalf of a larger issue. Just
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: to open up another dimension of it, I'm going to
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: just assume that the dream in this past is purely intra-psychic,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: that there's something just going on on a personal level
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: for him.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: And so he's going.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: Deeper into the Sierra Nevada mountains. And the deeper he goes,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: the more intense things become and the more haunted he becomes.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: So hauntings in general and ghosts can be interpreted as complexes.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: They are this remnants of people that are no longer there,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: which is really exactly what a complex is. Um, We
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: have thousands of memories of an individual person, let's say
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: a father or a mother. And even if they are
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: still biologically alive and we go off to college, live
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: somewhere else, we are haunted by the internal representations of
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: those experiences. So most importantly, that the complexes that are
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: affecting the psyche are invisible. And therein lay the primary problem.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: And I think the great venture of all forms of analysis, Freudian, Jungian, Lacanian,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: is trying to make the invisible visible because we are
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: affected by all kinds of memories and feelings, and more
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: so when we can't get a glimpse of them. So
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: we're beginning to see the effects of these un- visualized
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: feeling states we know that they evoke this feeling of
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: harassment I'm not sure what he means by molestation that
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: has many different valences and that the nightly hauntings are
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: creating severe acne now for most of us acne is
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: part of puberty that with this enormous upsurge of testosterone,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: this overproduction of sebum in the skin and other things
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: produces this intense acne. And for this person, really bruising,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: swelling all over the face, but acne comes from the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: deeper layer of the skin. Most people think it has
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: something to do with keeping the face clean, but it's not.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: It's Way down in the dermis, there's an overstimulation of
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: the functioning of the skin and things are trying to
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: break out from the surface. And that's part of the
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: invisible becoming visible.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: And it's difficult. And I think there is no lysis
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: in the dream yet, that we're just in the beginning.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: Of a growing.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: demand in the psyche to tolerate the tension of something
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: that's trying to talk to this person. And there's a
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: decision there that, why am I staying on the mission?
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: Why don't I just get the heck out of Dodge?
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: That's really great, Joseph. And I like your taking it
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: to the personal realm. And I want to say too,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: maybe related is, You know, the other thing about acne is,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: like you said, it's kind of associated with puberty. So
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: is there a little hearkening back to adolescence here, you know,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: or an adolescent frame of mind? Or does it speak
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: to something that was true for the dreamer at that
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: time of life? There's some something's being kind of infantilized
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: in some way or something.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking about the acne and the facial distortion as
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: the price that persona has to pay you know that's
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: the face we turn to the world and something that
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: is pleasant and neutral and so on and so forth,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: and then all of a sudden that is being demonstrably
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: flawed and announcing to the world this is not okay.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: I think I also want to mention that I think
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: what our dreamer is saying, and the dream too, is
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: being gaslighted.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: And there's something where he says at the very end
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: that he's being denied the truth of the situation. Well,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: you know, what's the truth? We could go around and
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: around and around on that. There are a number of
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 4: people in my life who feel coerced to remain silent
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: and or provide lip service to a community or workplace
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: set of values that they may not agree with. And
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: universally of the people that I know, and we're just
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: talking a handful of people, so it's a big generalization
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: to make, but the objection is there is no dialogue.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: We're not communicating about it. How do we talk about
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: it rather than people feeling that there is an overlay
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: of truth and rightness and justice and a bunch of
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: other sort of virtuous-seeming values that are doctrinal in some situations?
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: And what I would suggest along those lines is this
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: preservation of some ancient temples To me, it sounds like
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: a religious conflict and it's not uncommon, particularly for young
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: men who are in the midst of a sexual awakening.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: If you are part of a religious context that insists
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: on purity or demonizes sexuality, it's a time of enormous
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: conflict as to whether or not sexual experimentation is permitted
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: or whether it's damned in terms that are very, very frightening.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: So I think there is, or I would be curious
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: what this dreamer is, to go back to the early
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: sexual conflicts, that when you began to wake to your
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: own sexual dynamism, what kinds of thoughts, what kinds of
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: religious beliefs, social beliefs, made your own sexuality seem like
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: a dangerous creature that would come out at night? And
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: harass and frighten. And I think possibly the naming is,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: it's your sexuality. That's the thing that no one is saying.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: And in many religious households, there is sadly a belief
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: that if we keep children ignorant of sexuality, somehow that
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: keeps sexuality away from them. So we don't talk about
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: sexuality or we don't talk about sexual identity in any
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: form at all. And then what happens is sexuality then
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: becomes a kind of unnamed and invisible tension that comes
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: to visit and frighten. And it hasn't been named. So
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: I would offer that as one possibility to the dreamer.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: I'm also aware that our dreamer is a project manager.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: And at the end, he adds to his association's contractor work.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: So that may be, you know, as a project manager,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: part of what he does. So I'm interested in what's
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: a contractor and what do you contract for? And in
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: his dream, there are people who leave the senior people
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: are are disdainful than that he says some members of
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: the outfit abandon the job and they face ridicule from
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: the other bosses and then he says i'm scared i
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: question my own allegiance to the company and why i'm
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: even here at.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: All so.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: It raises the question of what is our dreamer contracting
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: for psychologically symbolically what's the deal what's the deal And,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: you know, workplaces have always had the ability to mandate
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: certain things. I'm old enough to remember people who worked
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: for IBM back in the day. There was a dress code.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: And guys wore shirts and ties and jackets and women
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: dressed a certain way. And if you were a woman
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: back then, you had to, quote, dress for success in
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: a skirted suit. And what's the deal here? that undergirds
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: that deal that looks like it's all perfectly proper, perfectly nice, professional. Really?
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: What else is going on here? And what does an
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: employee really contract for unconsciously, as well as doing the
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: nine-to-five part of the job consciously? What part are we
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: being asked to buy into?
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
• 1:15:12
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• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: Thank you.