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THE LAST AWAKENING: Death Anxiety and Its Role in Psychological Transformation · 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
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Well, today we're going to talk about this really cheerful topic,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: fear of death. And I have been wanting to talk
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: about this topic for a while because I've actually had
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: a number of analizands who came into treatment with this
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: as a major focus. These were, you know, kind of
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: younger people, kind of, you know, early middle age maybe,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: who just found that a pervasive kind of rumination about
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: death was holding them back and contributing to kind of
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: underlying anxiety that may be manifested as panic attacks or
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: just in general created other problems. So I think it's
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: a really interesting subject clinically. I'm sure I'm not the
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: only clinician having these kinds of issues walk into the
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: consulting room. And then, of course, I was really interested
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: to see what Jung had to say about it. And
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: in fact, he has quite a lot to say. So
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: let's begin our circumambulation.
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, of course, I can add the obvious, which
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: is fear of death is part of the human condition.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: It's always there, you know, especially if one has a
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: difficult or life-threatening illness. We're all aware of people, young people,
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: who through injury or accident are taken from life way
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: before their expected time. And, of course, you know, as
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: we age and death is closer and closer, what Jung
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: calls the afternoon of life and the evening of life,
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: we have to face it more consciously.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I find in my own work that it's important to
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: make a distinction when people say that they have a
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: fear of death. Many times they have a fear of suffering.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: They have a fear of illness. They have a fear
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: of decrepitude. They have a fear of injury. They have
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: the fear of loss of beauty, loss of attractiveness, loss
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: of capacity. And unfortunately, many of those things are rolled
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: into the concept of fear of death. But they're all very,
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: very different. And they require different stances, different processes of consideration.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: So if we're going to look at the specific idea
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: of the cessation of life of the body, And that
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: particular thing, which I actually find particularly rare among my analysands,
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: they more often have a fear of illness or a
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: fear of pain. And that's being expressed by fear of death.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: But this idea of the cessation of me in all
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: ways and the fear that somehow I will simply go
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: into a void.
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: The overarching heading for all that you've just said, is anxiety.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: Anxiety over all kinds of things, of what will happen
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: to me that I may not have control over. There's
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: a man named Ernest Becker who wrote a book that
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: I think was on the bestseller list many years ago
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: called Denial of Death. And he posits that that our
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: basic anxiety, if you trace everything else back to a taproot,
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: is our terror of death. It may be that a
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: given person is afraid of losing his job or any
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: one of a number of other fears like the ones
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: you just named, Joseph, but that underneath that is the
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: fear of not existing, the fear of, loss of control,
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: that there are things I don't have control over. So
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: we encapsulate things, we project things onto other people, we
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: displace our fear of death onto other life issues.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to respond to what you said, Joseph,
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  Speaker 2: you know, I do have folks, I have worked with
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: folks who what terrifies them is that sense of ceasing
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: to exist, of just that sense of the void and
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: And Deb, I think that's an interesting way to think
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: about it, that the top root of all fear is
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: this existential fear of non-existence. So if you think about, well,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: I'm nervous to go, I'm anxious to go to the
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: party tonight because I don't know that many people and
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: who will I talk to? It's like, well, what would
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: be so bad about that? Well, I might be terribly
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: embarrassed and humiliated. Well, what would be so bad about that? Well,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: then maybe I wouldn't have any friends. Well, what would
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: be so bad about that? Well, then when I needed
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: some help... It wouldn't be there. And, you know, you
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: can sort of just roll it all the way back eventually.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: And then I might die. So in some ways, it
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: is the ur-fear that does underlie anxiety. And I want
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: to respond, Deb, also to what you said. Like, I
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: think you both were kind of getting at this. You know,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: there is a substantial difference between a very sort of
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: neurotic fear of death which comes upon us earlier in
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: life and trips us up and makes it difficult for
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: us to live versus a much more grounded kind of
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: fear of death that we might face when we're either
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: beset by, you know, terrible illness or perhaps, you know,
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: in the moments before a terrifying car accident or just
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: even at the end of life. when we're actually looking
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: at something that has a sense of immediacy to it.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: And I think those two things function differently in the
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: psyche and probably require a different response as well.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: Well, I find myself thinking about the way that the
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: psyche prepares for death. I think about the end of
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: life experiences that I observed when I was working as
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: a medical social worker in a burn trauma unit. And
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: that when the soul and the body are both longing
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: for release, then the relationship to death is quite different
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: than death comes in the way that the ancient Greeks
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: thought of Persephone as the mistress of death. Where death
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: would come in a kind of winter garb, and in
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: the last moment, lift her veil to show the face
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: of the laughing maiden wreathed in spring flowers. And so
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: death comes sometimes in the longed-for release, in the embrace,
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: and the promise that some kind of laying down of
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: suffering is promised. And so it's not uncommon for us to, well,
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: I think of some of my grandparents talking about looking
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: forward to death, looking forward to the embrace, looking forward
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: to not waking up and being in terrible pain all
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: the time, or not continuing to miss all of one's friends,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: feel that everyone that one knows is on the other side,
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: somewhere waiting for them. The image of death can present
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: itself so differently depending on the psyche's orientation to the
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: end of life. Conversely, when the death impulse or the
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: death image comes to us too soon, let's say in
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: a suicidal fantasy or in a terrible threatening illness that
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: happens to a young person, then death comes as a
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: monster that is pursuing us, and we are running with
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: all of our strength to escape its claws, not because
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: death is evil, but because it is premature. Yes. Then
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: the psyche is unprepared. It is the wrong season. Death
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: shouldn't come in springtime, and death shouldn't come in the
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: middle of the summertime. And that's the wrong time. And
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: the imagery and the feeling around it then highlights the
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: wrongness of it.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: I think that's such an important point for all of
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: us who've been connected in some way with people who
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: have been taken too young at the wrong time. In
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: the springtime of their life or the summer of their life,
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: that it can feel to those of us who remain
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: like death is a trauma. I'm especially thinking of clients
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: that I have had whose parents died when they were very,
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: very young. So here's somebody who lost her mother when
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: she was five or somebody who lost a father when
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: he was 12. And so the early experience with death
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: is that it was traumatizing for that child or young person.
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: And it does feel, from a subjective point of view,
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: like it was just wrong. You know, my parent was
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: not supposed to die at age, say, 35. That this
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: is not the right rhythm. It's not the right time.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: It's not how things are, quote, supposed to be, unquote.
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: Versus the sadness of watching a grandparent die who has
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: one hope's lived a full life. And there's sadness, but
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: it doesn't feel wrong the way early death can feel.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: So wanting to really focus on fear of death, though,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: I want to take what you've both been saying and
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: maybe kind of look at this phenomenon of either early
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: or late in life, becoming beset by a fear that
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: paralyzes us. So one particular example that I find, and
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: I am personally aware of this. In fact, Deb, I
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: have a very fond memory of you in regards to
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: this that maybe you don't remember of how afraid I
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: was of my own death when my children were small.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was terrified. Honestly, I used to have
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: to drive an hour to go to analysis. And every
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: single time I did that, I was so anxious. And
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: it wasn't rational. It's not like I was thinking, oh, well,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: if I die, my kids will be motherless. It was visceral.
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  Speaker 2: And it was almost paralyzing. I almost developed a kind
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: of phobia of driving during that period. And I have
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: found this with other mothers of young children, that there
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: is this kind of real fear that happens. And Deb,
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  Speaker 2: here's the story. You had spent the night at my house.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: And the next morning we were getting on a plane
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: to go to Boulder to take our exams.
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: Oh, boy.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: And we were so anxious anyway because we were going
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: to take these bloody exams. But I also was so
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: afraid to fly because my kids were, they were like
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: three and five or something like that. They were tiny.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: And you came down the stairs and I said something like...
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: something about being afraid to fly and you just looked
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: at me with a knowing smile and you said it's
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: always worse when our kids are little and it was
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: so relieving because you you got it you got it
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: and it was very containing to have that scene so
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: i i think it's probably normal and adaptive for mothers
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: to have a heightened fear of their own death when
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: their children are small it's interesting it's almost like biology
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: sort of accounts for that and it's like hey mom
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: You better not die. These kids really need you. You know, again,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: for me, it was painful and almost debilitating. I had
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: to fight against the fear of getting in the car,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: especially for longer car rides. This can beset any of
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: us at a time in our lives when it's not
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: really appropriate. And how do we understand that, that fear
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: of death that kind of keeps us, that can be paralyzing?
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: Before I move on to that, what you've just related
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: is really, it just touches me and took me back
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: to remembering my own young motherhood and the feeling that
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: I had to be there at every moment and that
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: somehow my presence was protective. You know, even to go
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: out for a night, get a babysitter, you know, What
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: if something happened to me? What if something happened to them?
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: It takes me back to just a felt appreciation for
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: how painful and very real and very visceral that fear
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: of death can be. So it's not just a topic.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: It's a lived experience.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: I was thinking about just the early psychoanalytic thought around
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: this because for Freud, This idea of eros and thanatos
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: was a big topic, that love and death, or eros
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: and death, were polarities. And so much of what or
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: how Freud conceptualized the psychoanalytic venture was to help people
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: orient towards eros, towards the love of life. the zest
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: of work towards family and connection, and that anything that
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: was anti-Eros, in a sense, was part of the death instinct.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: And the death instinct was in large part driven by
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: loss and alienation and withdrawal. So just to put that
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: on the table, that, again, from the psychoanalytic theory, That
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: the fear of death was connected to early childhood experiences
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: and particularly the first time that the child experiences a
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: loss of a loved object in any of its forms,
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: whether it's that the beloved pet has passed away or
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: sometimes even a beloved relative moved away. A friend goes
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: and leaves and is now in another country. And from
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: an archetypal standpoint to the child, the loss of the
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: object permanence, the loss of the object becomes the first
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: experience of death. That there's something that I rely on
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: that is removed from my presence and I have no
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: control over that. So The beginning is that loss of
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: the loved one or the fear of being abandoned. And
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: to be abandoned is, in a certain sense, the mirror
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: side of that, that I have fallen into the realm
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: of the forgotten by having been abandoned, that in a sense,
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: I am now a ghost. I am less alive, or
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: I am deadened. from having been abandoned. So the concept
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: of death is often introduced to the child just through
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: loss and that this early experience of loss begins to
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: create a feeling in the child of their own mortality
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: and the mortality of others. So that's one theory about
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: where this begins to percolate. Now this is normal But
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: sometimes if that process of negotiating with the normal sense
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: of loss is impaired or gets caught in a kind
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: of complex, then it can grow into something that doesn't
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: feel normal or begins to be overwhelming. So separation anxiety
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: can feed into a death complex. that can grow into
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: this internalization of fear that then comes in later on
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: in life. It doesn't sound like, oh, I'm afraid of
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: separation or afraid of being abandoned, but it infests other
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: less appropriate images in the psyche. So when you talk
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: about going on the plane as a young mother, And
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: there's a fear of death. Another way that that could
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: be thought of is separation anxiety.
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: I would be separated from my beloved children because of,
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: let's say, my death or even just the idea of death.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: But the real issue is that they would be over
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: there and I wouldn't be able to reach them. And
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: I would be trapped over on the other side. And
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: how intolerable it would be to be separated from your babies.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: That would be an awful thing. But it shows up
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: as a fear of death.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: I wonder, in a way, if we're circling around absence
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: and what we do when something is absent that we
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: really need of proximity to our children, the death of
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: a loved one, the loss of what we, in psych speak,
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: call the transitional object of you leave home And uh-oh,
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: we forgot Bobby's teddy bear. And nobody realized it, and
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: it's too late. We can't go back and get it.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: But it's absence of something that I need. And some absences,
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: a child, a teen, an adult, we can integrate it.
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: We can adapt to it. We can mourn it. We
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: can somehow come to terms with it. And some absences,
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: if they're premature or really traumatic, we can't come to
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: terms with. But I think at the crux of it,
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: it is coming to terms with an absence. the beloved
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: thing is not there and it cannot be restored.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Maybe, but I think I want to, I don't want
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: to make death about anything. I'm feeling reluctant to make
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: death about something other than death because it is the
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: sort of final mystery that we all have to somehow countenance.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: And I love the fact that you brought up, both
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: of you, the kind of childhood beginnings of it because
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: there is an age that kids are when they, many
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: of them will go through a kind of keen interest
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: in death. And I think it's a, I'm just trying
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: to remember when, I think it was like four or
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: five when, when my kids did. And, you know, they,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: they're always asking about every time you pass a cemetery,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: they're very interested in that. And they're fairly curious about that.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: And they're asking, am I going to die? Are you
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: going to die with some anxiety, but also a lot
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: of curiosity. And, and, you know, it's like a character
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: in a book dies and they're really curious about that. And,
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: And maybe a little upset. And I think sometimes parents
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: are too protective. And it's like, oh, I'm not going
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: to let them watch the first few minutes of what
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: is that movie about the fish? Oh, shoot.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: Nemo.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Something about Nemo. Anyway, so many children's stories sort of
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: begin with a loss like Bambi back from my generation.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: You know, Bambi's mother dies. And I think parents often
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: feel protective of that. You know, it's like, oh, I
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: can't read Charlotte's Web because, you know, Charlotte dies. But
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I think that's actually kind of the wrong tack. And
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: there's something helpful about just being matter of fact about it.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: But this awareness that we have early on, in some sense,
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: when you're five, it's a pretty hypothetical understanding. But I
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: think it also, there is a visceral reality that we
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: as a human body and psyche kind of know what
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: the end game to this is. And And how momentous
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: that is to really wrap our heads around it. And
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: do we ever really. And one of the things that
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: comes up for me is the legend of the myth
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: of Gilgamesh. Which is, you know, the oldest piece of
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: literature that we have. And this is a central theme.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: You know, Gilgamesh has all of these adventures. And he
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: has this friend Enkidu. And then Enkidu dies. And the
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: whole second half of that myth, which is very profound,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: you know, Gilgamesh is kind of like a five-year-old. He
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: maybe didn't realize that he was going to die. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: he says, shall I not die too? Am I not
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: like Enkidu? I have grown afraid of death. So I
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: roam the steppe. And he goes on a quest to
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: find immortality and he finds it. But then he falls asleep.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: And while he's asleep, The snake steals it. It just
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: goes right to something very, very basic and essential, that
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: we have this reality that we cannot deny, even though
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: we like to try, that we will die. It is
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: the final mystery, isn't it? The territory one cannot visit.
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: What I'm thinking is that some of these other losses
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: are a kind of preparation or rehearsal. the kid who's
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: off for the weekend to visit grandparents and you forget
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: the teddy bear, has an opportunity to somehow come to
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: terms with this loss and absence, a kind of death,
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: and all of the feelings about it. And that hopefully
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: then along the way, we come to terms with the
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: possibility of our own absence from ourselves. that we call
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: dying and death. And then what will happen to me?
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: And facing that anxiety, facing that, the uncertainty, you know,
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: we can reassure the child that, you know, two days
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: we'll be back and your teddy bear will be there.
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: Other times it's a devastating loss, but we don't know
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: what happens. Will I just cease to be Will I
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: be absent from myself? And I think, you know, we
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: displace that uncertainty onto all kinds of life projects that,
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: you know, weigh underneath my ambition to have the proverbial
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: corner office or make a lot of money or do
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: good social justice things in the world. There are a
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: thousand things is a way of pushing our awareness of
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: death into the background because we're leading a heroic life.
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: We're engaged and we're going to plant new crops on
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: the back 40. We're going to get another degree. We're
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: going to help dedicate the new wing of the hospital
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: to There are thousands of things that if I throw
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: myself into life and if I really work hard and
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: if I'm really into it 100%, then somehow my passion
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: and energy for life and my achievements will make the
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: inevitable end of things recede way into the background.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: There's such truth to that, Deb, that if we have
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: evidence of our own dynamism our own vitality, our own
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: capacity to act and create and to produce and reproduce,
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: that's the antithesis of the decline, the antithesis of the
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: receding into the great dark.
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: Because we're ascending. And I think there is an essential
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: polarity here of, you know, that we're unique and we
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: have consciousness and we have all kinds of wonderful things.
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: And so it's an effort to transcend. And in the
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: face of the opposite, which is the ending, the not being.
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: And if we can transcend, if we can achieve, we
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: offset the other.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: If we take all of that and we lean a
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: little bit into Jung's work, that fear of death and
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: fear of the unconscious and fear of the regression, all
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: mixed together as well. And one of the strange things
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: places that fear of death can surface is fear of
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: falling asleep. The loss of consciousness of falling asleep. And
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: it does in some ways partake of that kind of
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: death because we think of death as loss of consciousness,
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: loss of self-awareness. When we think of often Underlying suicidal
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: fantasies is a return to the great mother. When I
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: work with people that have suicidal fantasies, often they're so tired,
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: they're so beleaguered, that there's so much strain inside. And
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: they long for this space where nothing is required, not
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: even breathing, not even eating. not even bathing. There are
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: no decisions to be made. Everything around us is non-confrontive,
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: is safe and easy. And one could argue that that's
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: a vestigial memory of being in the womb. Because when
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: we are a fetus, we're in their womb, we don't eat,
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: we don't breathe. The umbilical cord takes over All of
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: our needs, and it's the mother, the great mother's, the
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: mother's body provides everything that's required. And so the retreat
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: into the earth, into the tomb, is much like a
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: retreat into the womb on a fantastical level. And so
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: much of how Jung characterized the human venture is the
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: ego in its heroic stance. to fight to be conscious,
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: to not succumb to the collapse into the instinctive, into
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: the unconscious, again, into the womb. And yet at the
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: end of life, that is the longed-for place, to return
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: to the death mother. When we are tired and we
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: need renewal, and we hope, as in the Eleusinian Mysteries,
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: that we go into the cave, that we go into
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: the underworld, and that something happens, and perhaps there is
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: a return in some way, but that the cycle back
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: into something like the womb is required to reemerge.
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: We don't know a lot. about the Eleusinian mysteries. We
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: know some stuff. But what I'm thinking about is how
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: do we prepare for death? These mysteries were available to
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: anybody who spoke Greek, whether you were a a peasant
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: or a slave or a nobleman. But the preparation was arduous,
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: and it took a year. And then there were the
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: mysteries underground and an experience of a symbolic death. And
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: it was said that people who could experience the mysteries,
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: people said they were no longer afraid of death. And
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: today we have a modern equivalent of people who have
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: had near-death experiences. And there are a number of very
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: convincing testimonials by people who have had these experiences and
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: by emergency room and other physicians who have been present
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: to resuscitate some patients significant number of people who were
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: declared legally or physically dead, and that those people have
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: an experience from which they return and have a very
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: different orientation and attitude to life because they've had that experience.
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: But in today's world, in the Western world, we don't
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: have those experiences.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: You know, I know I read some stuff, kind of
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: firsthand reports about the Eleusinian Mysteries, and I wish I'd
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: put my hands on it for this episode. But it's,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: you know, this is the promise of the mysteries is
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: that you will no longer need to fear death because
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: you will have died. Death and rebirth is a central
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: theme in almost all rituals of initiation. So that initiation
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: is protective against the fear of death. So when I
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: think about my younger analisands struggling with the fear of death,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: it's perhaps they haven't been initiated. And you're right, Deb,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: that most people, one of the common things with people
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: who experience near-death experiences is that they no longer feel
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: afraid of death. The other thing that's related, and we
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: talked about this a few weeks ago, is the use
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: of psychedelics is often used to treat people who are
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: near the end of life. And the findings are that
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: that often alleviates or ameliorates the fear of death, which
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: is the tie-in is that there's strong evidence to believe
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: that there was a psychedelic element in the Eleusinian mysteries
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: with the Kikian. But in any case, it's this notion
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: that confrontation with the transpersonal can heal this fear of death.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: And this is very much what Jung says, that it's
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: contact with the numinous that heals, that we get into
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: an erotic space where we are kind of spinning and
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: just in anxiety all the time and disconnected from ourselves.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: And that what pops us out of that is contact
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: with the numinous, whether that's through an experience with psilocybin
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: or or through a near-death experience, or perhaps a dream,
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: or just a spontaneous arising in the psyche of something.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: I am interested in Joseph, what you were saying before
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: about the mother, and this is leaning right into Jung's work,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: and to a certain extent Neumann's, and specifically Jung in
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Volume 5, which is that the task of the ego
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: is this heroic task of separating from the mother. And
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to read a quote here. The libido
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: that is withdrawn so unwillingly from the mother turns into
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: a threatening serpent, symbolizing the fear of death. For the
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: relation to the mother must cease, must die. And this
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: is almost the same as dying oneself. That is to
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: say the violence of the separation is proportionate to the
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: strength of the bond uniting the son with the mother.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: And the stronger this broken bond was in the first place,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: the more dangerous does the mother approach him in the
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: guise of the unconscious. So there's this kind of paradox
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: that when you step out into life, and that's really
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: what he's talking about separating from the mother. He's not
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: really talking about a young person moving out from home.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: It's a psychological experience of becoming your own person. And
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: that that is so kind of terrifying that It's almost
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: like the unconscious comes back to attack you in the
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: form of this fear of death. And you have to
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: sort of fight against that if you are to be
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: in life.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: So a couple of interesting things are on the table.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: One is about perhaps the reports of those who have
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: had near-death experiences or who might actually say they've had
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: death experiences. The other is some of the mystery traditions
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: and what they might have. communicate and how we might
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: make use of that as well as then the fight
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: to remain conscious in all of its forms. So, um,
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: one resource that I've always found interesting is the Monroe
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Institute and they're out in Faber, Virginia, outside of Charlottesville.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: And just a quick, interesting story, uh, very similar to
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: what you were saying, Deb, Robert Monroe had, um, a
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: near-death experience. He was in a medical crisis. He was
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: apparently medically dead. His body was inactive for some prolonged
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: period of time. He was revived and had these rather
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: extraordinary experiences of being outside of his body and being
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: alert and conscious. And as he returned and tried to
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: integrate this extraordinary experience, one of the primary values is
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: that he lost his fear of physical death and felt
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: that having achieved that, his whole personality had changed. His
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: values had changed, what he thought was important. When he
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: looked out at the world, at what people seemed to
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: be fighting about, what wars were fueled by, so much
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: of the great human tension seemed to be driven by
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: the fear of death and also the avoidance of anything
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: that might appear to put the physical body a threat.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: And so his institute, and now for decades, has tried
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: to induce out-of-body experiences at will. And his hope is
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: that if the average person, without any religious context, but
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: just as a matter of learning how to induce certain
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: brainwave states, could experience themselves existing outside of the body
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: and then return to the body, that the primary side
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: effect would be that people would no longer be afraid
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: of death or, more correctly, have evidence that consciousness survives
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: outside of the physical body. So that's one interesting point.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: amalgam of this mystical experience and then modern science seeking
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: to try to grant this experience for the benefit that
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: we have been talking about to overcome the fear of
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: death and all the implications that that might have for us.
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: It's a great example of how historically this has been bookended.
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: Thousands of years ago, there were the Ellisonian Mysteries, and
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: now there's the Monroe Institute. And what we're talking about,
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: which you keep bringing us back to, Lisa, is the
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: fear of death. And that if we have the experience
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: of participating in the Ellisonian Mysteries, maybe if we have
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: an experience of, psychedelic out-of-body or some sort of altered state.
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: We have the experience that the Monroe Institute facilitates. We
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: don't doubt the experience, and the fear is gone, which
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: is different from certainty about, oh, this is what happens afterward.
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: But we no longer fear it, which is a tremendous
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: benefit blessing and boon, since, as we all know, death
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: is inevitable.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: You know, I want to just talk a little bit
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: about other things that can be protective against a fear
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: of death. So we've talked about this kind of a
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: numinous experience, but I think that leaning right into being
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: alive is also important. And Maybe even just really accepting
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: that death is a kind of important and inevitable. part
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: of life too. I'm going to just pull up this
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: great quote from the Red Book. Jung says, if I
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: accept death, then my tree greens, since dying increases life.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: If I plunge into the death encompassing the world, then
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: my buds break open and how much our life needs death.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: And I have seen this in my practice that when
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: you just say, look, death, like you said, Deb, death
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: is inevitable. Let's just, let's get busy living. And there's,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: you know, Jung echoes that also. This is another Jung quote.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: It's long, but it's really rich and there's a lot
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: packed in. He says, natural life is the nourishing soil
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: of the soul Anyone who fails to go along with
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: life remains suspended, stiff, and rigid in midair. That is
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: why so many people get wooden in old age. They
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: look back and cling to the past with a secret
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: fear of death in their hearts. They withdraw from the
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: life process, at least psychologically, and consequently remain fixed like
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: nostalgic pillars of salt with vivid recollections of youth and
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: but no living relation to the present. From the middle
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: ready to die with life. For in the secret hour
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: of life's midday, the parabola is reversed. Death is born.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: The second half of life does not signify ascent unfolding
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: increase exuberance, but death since the end is its goal.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: The negation of life's fulfillment is synonymous with the refusal
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: to accept its ending. That's so important. Both mean not
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: wanting to live and not wanting to live is identical
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: with not wanting to die. Waxing and waning make one curve.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: And this notion that when we avoid death, we're also
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: avoiding life is absolutely borne out in what I see.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: in the lives of my patients. And that the more
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: you embrace death, the more you're able to embrace life.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: So that is the paradox here.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: What I hear in his use of metaphor is the
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: strained relationship that we have with the idea of the soluteo.
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: And so part of his alchemical treatment of the same
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: ideas is that all of life is a cycle of
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: dissolving and recoagulating, salutio and coagulatio, and that when we
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: resist the dissolving process, which is a psycho-spiritual process, that
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: we get into this stiffness, that in old age, as
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: he was saying, that there is such a resistance to dissolving,
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: which could be the dissolving of fixed attitudes, the dissolving
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: of certain positions emotionally that we're all done changing. I'm
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: too old to try that, or I'm too old to
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: try to let go of something or to resolve a
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: certain conflict inside of myself. But the resistance to this
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: process of softening and firming up over and over again
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: is part of that both refusal to die, which is
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: the great dissolution, but also the refusal to live in
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: as much as life requires this constant rebirth of attitude,
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: this constant renewal of softness and re-engagement. And so the,
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: the first, you know, solutio is the mother child or
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: a boric bliss where There's a great ocean between the
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: mother and the child, and the child has to constellate
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: out of that and become his own or her own
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: little person. Then there is the second salutio, which is
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: the great falling in love with whoever that is, and
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: the not wanting of any boundaries, and the bliss of
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: the salutio of love. And then one has to separate
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: out of that, and I am in relationship, but I
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: am still my own person. And then there's the salutio
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: of initiation where the self says, in order to make
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: room for me as the voice of the self, that
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: the ego must submit to a releasing of its boundaries
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: and then a re-coagulating with some of the perspectives of
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: the self, the broader attitudes, the widening of the personality,
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: And then once again, there is a tightening up, and
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: there at the end of life, death invites the dissolution
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: of the body to go into the great solution that
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: has no limits, and in some ways, not necessarily a
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: promise of a recoagulation, but one expands infinitely. And as
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: some say, when someone passes away, It is that last
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: exhalation which any of us have seen as we witness
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: the passing of a loved one and the idea that
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: the spirit escapes, the pneuma, the ruach, escapes in the
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: last breath and expands infinitely outward in this great merging
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: with all things, the fullest solutio. And so when I
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: was listening to your quote from Jung, I find myself
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: thinking about that and how the stiffening, the refusal to dissolve,
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: at first seems like I'm refusing death because death is
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: the great dissolving. But it's in the refusing that we
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: also refuse to grow because growth requires some form of dissolving.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: And we refuse life.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: And therefore we refuse life.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I like the cyclical nature that you've just articulated
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: about a series of dissolvings and then reforming, and that
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: this is a cycle of life, and then there is
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: the ultimate soluteo called death, and we don't have any guarantees, right?
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: about will there be a recoagulating, a rebirth, an afterlife, etc.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: And of course, many a religion has conceived its own
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: notions of what that might look like. But where I
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: want to go is that in our collective societal fear
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: of death, People don't have very much experience of it.
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: You may sit by the bedside of someone that you've
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: loved dearly in life as he or she is dying.
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: But basically, we don't talk about it. We don't prepare
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: young people, midlife people, or anyone else, really. We don't
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: prepare for death. We don't talk about it. It's not
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: a subject of conversation. And we kind of outsource it
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: and medicalize it. You know, people go to a hospital
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: or they go to a hospice. You know, then the
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: preparation of the body is outsourced to a crematorium or
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: to a mortician. So there's an underlying collective level of
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: kind of airbrushing the reality of death away, whereas, you know,
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: If we could see it, if we could enfold it
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: as part of life, it might be a little different.
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: I know in the Jewish tradition, there is a ritual
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: where people wash the body. And this is a dedicated
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: service that has helped people to see and to touch
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: a body of one who is deceased.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: And to.
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: See, to accept, to have that experience rather than the
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: distancing from it, that is our collective norm.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: You know, some of it, Deb, I think is, you know,
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: this impenetrable mystery, right? Hamlet calls it the undiscovered country
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: from whose born no traveler returns. And I think that
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: it can help us to have a belief Of course,
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: we don't know. We don't, and we probably will never know.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: In some ways, I hope we never know. But to
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: have a belief about what happens, whether or not that
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: it's that, you know, consciousness continues in some way, or
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: we become, we sort of returned to great spirit or
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: we become reincarnated. The mystery traditions, the great religions of
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: the world had these stories that told us what happened.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: And in some cultures, uh, these were very elaborately described
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: and worked like in the Tibetan book of the dead
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: or the Egyptian book of the dead, which Joseph, maybe
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: you can, can say a little bit more about, but,
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: but in our modern era, we are left without really
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: any structuring stories about what happens. And I think that
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: makes it more difficult because then we're just face to
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: face with that, that mystery that, that Hamlet was facing down.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: And of course, Confronting that mystery has been the source
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: of many a great work of art, including, of course,
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: that famous play from Shakespeare.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: The Books of the Dead are often the books of initiation.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which is said to
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: be the stages that the soul goes through as it
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: absorbs and integrates its life experience and then is weighed
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: and judged and passed on to eternal life or not.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: These same mythologies were used for the ritual mysteries of
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: initiation in the Egyptian magical system that the initiate would
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: take upon himself the role of Osiris and to be
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: ritualistically entombed for some amount of time and then raised
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: from the sarcophagus into as if he was the risen
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: Osiris having undergone this process. Vestiges of this are still
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: present in the Freemasonic tradition because the third step of
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: the initiation is the raising of the master mason. And
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: to be raised to be the master mason is to
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: be brought from the death of relative ignorance into this
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: state of symbolic enlightenment. And so it is also in
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: the Tibetan Book of the Dead that the soul goes
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: through these various bardos and has various experiences. And if
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: they are negotiated with the right attitude, that the soul
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: can experience a kind of liberation. Those same processes of
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: understanding how to let go and how to orient to
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: these processes is part of meditation traditions. in certain schools
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: of Kabbalah. It's thought that when the soul dies, that
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: the soul travels up through the various Sephiroth or the
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: various worlds in the Merkabah or the sacred chariot and
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: encounters these various aspects of the divine, angelic hierarchies. And
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: so in some schools of Kabbalah, the meditation techniques are
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: said to expose one ritualistically and symbolically to these states
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: of consciousness as well. All of this leading to some
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: sense of understanding the life that one has lived in
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: such a way that we can integrate what is best
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: and come to a moral and ethical stance of what
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: we wish we could could have done better, and might
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: do better in the future. And then that process becomes
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: a gate into a promise that there will come another
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: time to do better, to be closer to perfection in
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: one way or another. The Christian tradition has some sense
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: of that, although there is a bit of a bypass
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: that one will come to Christ, and Christ will make
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: us perfect without any additional process, without any additional educative process.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: But that is actually one of the few ancient traditions
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: that says that no work will be required of us
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: in order to retain or achieve, rather, the union with God,
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: the union with perfection. So if I were to ground
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: that a little bit in terms of what can one do,
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: and where I think Jungian work is so congruent with
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: these ancient traditions, is that going into oneself, whether it's
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: dream analysis or the analysis of one's fantasies, or being
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: interested in the way that we function inside of ourselves,
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: examining our complexes, our thoughts, our reactions. All of this
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: is a way of going into this inner world and
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: seeking to resolve the suffering inside of us that has
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: both an ethical, a behavioral, an emotional, and an attitudinal
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: cause in the hopes that freedom could be attained within us.
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: And for Jung, the freedom is this capacity to most
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: fully express the deepest and, one might argue, the divine
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: blueprint that has been apportioned to us, uniquely to us.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: This is talked about in the Purushas and in the
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: Indian tradition that the self, the Atman, that there is
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: an absolutely unique part of ourselves that is obstructed. And
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: anything that we can do to unobstruct the divine spark
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: inside of us is the path. And that the ways
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: we fail to unobstruct that unique divine spark in us
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: is what we will have to confront after death. So
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: why not do it now?
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: Over and over again, in all that you've delineated, it
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: seems to me exactly that, that the message is live, live.
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: No matter what religious or philosophical tradition you may adhere to,
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: there are stages, stages of growth, stages of growth. fulfillment
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: of your own innate potential that Jung called individuation. That
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: if we really live, it seems like this is the idea,
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: if you really live into yourself, into your own potential,
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: try to be self-aware, reflect, then when it is time
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: to die, to pass on, you will have had all
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: those experiences that make make one less afraid because we've
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: gone through the losses of various life stages and become more,
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: become bigger. But that's it. Do it now. Right.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: Live.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: Live. Embrace death and embrace life.
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: And so much of that Buddhist tradition of accepting impermanence,
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: just as you were saying, Lisa, that accepting the reality
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: of the death of the body. And so that's another
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: delineation I think that's so important is that when we
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: say accepting death, since we don't know what happens to consciousness,
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: how about if we just take that out of the
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: equation for a moment and entertain the possibility that what
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: we can be certain of is that bodies die. The
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: body dies. will cease functioning, bodies stop breathing, bodies, hearts
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: stop beating, and that we can be absolutely certain that
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: this pelt that we walk around in, as I like
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: to call my body, the jalopy, I can keep this
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: jalopy going maybe for another X number of years. I'll
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: patch the tires and do whatever I can to keep
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: it rumbling along. But at a certain point, the jalopy
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: is going to break an axle. It's going to throw
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: a rod. It's not going to be repairable. And it's
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: not going to turn the ignition one morning. It just
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: isn't going to start.
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: But perhaps.
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: We are the riders in our jalopies, and that something
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: else is possible when the jalopy finally won't start one morning.
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: And that differentiation is something that's very consistent in all
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: the ancient traditions, and even in most modern religions, that
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: to not confuse the jalopy with the spirit.
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: I really like your analogy, Joseph. The jalopy versus the rider.
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: It's a lovely thought and one that has... a certain
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: amount of substantiation in the experiences of people who've had
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: near-death experiences. And we don't know. And that's part of
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: this last initiation that just as young people who are
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: sort of proverbially dragged out into the desert at night
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: by the elders, don't know. We don't know. And that's
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: part of it.
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: So what I'd like to challenge, because we have a
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: few more minutes, Deb, is that I would like to
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: extract the word we from that statement.
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: Because some people are very certain that they do know.
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: Some people are very certain that they have attained this
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: capacity to us, to step outside of the jalopy, wander
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: through these spiritual worlds, collect objective information, and to return
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: to the jalopy and drive back into the bedroom and
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: talk about it. Now, perhaps the average person could say individually,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: I have never had that experience. I wonder about other people.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: I wonder if there are methods or ways to attain
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: such an experience of what it's like to be free
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: of the jalopy for a period of time. But I
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: am cautious to say that no one can possibly know
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: what comes next. And for those who wish to explore
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: some of this, I would also steer you to the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: work of Rudolf Steiner, who was an extraordinary German mystic.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: And Steiner said, Many people don't realize, but he was
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: in some ways the founder of biodynamic farming, which in
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: some ways has been divorced from his mystical observations and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: become its own scientific endeavor. Rudolf Steiner founded the Waldorf
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: school system. And many people don't realize is that Steiner
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: had this capacity to park the jalopy of his body,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: open the door, and go into these extraordinary states of
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: consciousness and observe child development from these spiritual realms, come back,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: and then make recommendations for how to educate children based
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: upon how their souls seem to develop when he observed
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: them outside of the limits of his body. The same
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: he did with anthroposophic medicine and a number of other
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: different realms. He also wrote on human existence between death
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: and rebirth, which is something that one can Google, Rudolf Steiner,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: human existence between death and rebirth, and read through his
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: accounts of the experiences that souls in general seem to
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: occur based on his observation of that and his report
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: of his own death process. They were those who were
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: with him in those final few hours. And his capacity
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: to be monitoring the shifts of energies in his body,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: the shifts of consciousness around him, this absolute absence of
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: fear that he experienced, although he was at times in
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: great physical pain. And similar accounts from any number of
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: people both great mystics as well as perhaps ordinary folks
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: who seem to be able to track the transition towards
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: their own death and speak to it even in those
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: last few minutes. And I think there is more confidence
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: and wisdom that what we call the mystery is known
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: in some fashion, which is why why many of the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: accounts of the journey between death and rebirth seem so
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: consistent beyond traditions and across millennia. And so I'll share
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: that the night before my father died, I'd gone to
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: the hospital. He had been delirious and restrained for about
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: a week, and we were unsure how his treatment was
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: going to be going forward. But I went to the
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: hospital to visit him thinking that he would be discharged
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: from the hospital in a few days. There was a
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: bit of turbulence there and he was confused and finally
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: got him comfortable and he and I were alone and
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: finally got him to lay on his side because his
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: back was in a lot of pain but he couldn't
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: figure that out. So he finally relaxed, his pain subsided
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: and I put my head down on the pillow next
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: to him and he my hands and his hands. And
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: he just gently rubbed them and patted them. And he
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: said to me, I'm going to Jerusalem. I am going
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: to Jerusalem. And that's not anything my father had ever
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: said to me. It wasn't a particularly religious man. I said,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: really dad, that is, that's the goal. And he goes, absolutely.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: It's going to happen. I'm going to Jerusalem. And that
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: night he had passed away from a massive heart attack.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: But the journey and the enthusiasm for the journey, the
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: trip to Jerusalem, that he was right on the verge of,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: and the absolute certainty that he was going, and that
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: he knew it was a destination, and he happened to
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: call it at that moment, Jerusalem.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: You know, however we do it, Whatever religious or philosophical
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: tradition we subscribe to, whatever individual experiences we have, it's
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: up to each of us to come to terms with
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: our own journey toward death and how we face it,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: what we feel, what we believe. It's ultimately an individual
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: journey that each of us has to take.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: And I think that's a good place to switch to
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: a dream. Excuse my brief interruption. I just want to
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: let you know some ways that you can support us
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: and the podcast. First of all, I'm so thrilled to
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: let you know that my book is now out. It's
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: available in bookstores, The Vital Spark, Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: and Find Your Feminine Fire. So I hope that you
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: will check that out. We have a live podcast recording
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: coming up This Saturday, February 10th, there are free tickets
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: still available as of this recording. You can join us.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: You can hear more about the book and you can
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: ask us questions and we'll even do a dream interpretation
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: for someone in the audience. So please check that out.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: I want to remind you that you can like and
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. You can subscribe to
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: us on YouTube. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: These things are all incredibly helpful. You can also become
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: a Patreon subscriber. And we produce extra content every week
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: for our patrons. We're very appreciative. And finally, you can
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: check out Dream School, our 12-month online self-paced program where
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: you can learn to work with your dreams. And we're
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: really excited for the book that we have coming up
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: on dream interpretation, which is based on the materials in
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: Dream School. So if you want to get an early
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: start on that, go over to our website and check
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: that out. It's thisunionlife.com and you'll find more about everything there.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: So thanks. Today's dreamer is an 81-year-old woman who is
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: a retired higher education counselor and she has titled her dream,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: The House with Hidden Rooms. I was in a house
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: with hidden rooms. And she notes, I have been a
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: caretaker for my husband of 61 years. He has a
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: slow-growing cancer. I am healthy and keep active as time allows.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: And she notes that the main feelings in the dream
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: were curiosity, calmness, and sometimes fear. And she notes that
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: she's had a recurring dream of houses. The houses are
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: located in different locations, sometimes near the ocean. and sometimes
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: on a low hillside. So there's something kind of gentle
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: and moving, I think, about this image.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'll just saunter through the door first and say
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: that the theme of a house with hidden rooms is
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: a very, very common theme, Even Jung had that dream.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: So it's usually a very positive dream. I mean, they're
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: not always positive. I've had versions of that dream that
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: become nightmarish, so. But in general, the theme is you're
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: in a house and you're discovering it's your house and
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: you're discovering that there are these rooms you never knew about,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: which is a very moving image, right? That you're discovering
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: new aspects of yourself and that this woman is 81
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: years old and having that dream is touching. That we
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: can still discover unknown rooms in our psychic house, even
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: in our ninth decade or eighth decade. I think that's
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: the ninth decade.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: That's right. This is hitting a little too close to
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: home for me, Lisa. So I really sort of seconding
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: what you've just said. What is a house? You know,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: a house is literally, if we just explain what a
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: house is, as if nobody knows, it is a dwelling.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: It is an edifice that we have had constructed or
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: was constructed. So it requires tools and consciousness and planning
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: and all the things that we associate with ego. A
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: house and a dream is often a symbol for what
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: we've built, what we have constructed. Through our decades, the
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: dreamer and I, our decades of life, and all of
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: a sudden there's more. And our dream ego starts to
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: walk through the hidden rooms. So there is the forward momentum, volition, curiosity,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: whatever the dream ego might be feeling, but she's going forward.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: She doesn't leave the house. She doesn't sit down and
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: have a cup of coffee. She goes through the hidden rooms.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: And here's the first room. It's supposed to be a bedroom,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: but it had a small stream with grass along the banks.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: So now we know we are not in a real-world
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: house anymore. And I was struck by that image of
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: that all of a sudden, here's the natural world. You know,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: it seems like such a gentle, positive, pleasant, bucolic image.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: It's S-shaped. I'm not quite sure what to make of
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: S-shaped and felt like a meditation room.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think the S shape is it's
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: an organic shape, right? It's not a square. It is,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: it recalls, I mean, it's almost like where the wild
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: things are, right? Where his bedroom becomes an ocean and
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: a forest. And so this kind of liminal, it's a
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: liminal space.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's lovely. And just, I'm just going to take
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: a step back if people don't know about where the
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: wild things are. It's a children's story about a little
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: boy who's stomping around in the house and his mother
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: sends him to his room. And that's where, as you said, Lisa,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: in his room, he goes to the island of the
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: wild things, which is what his mother has called him.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: She said, you're a wild thing. And so he goes
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: to this imaginal space and he interacts with the wild
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: things and he finally tames them, meaning he tames his
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: own instinctual, impulsive, aggressive impulses. So yes, it does feel
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: like time out of time, an imaginal space, a liminal space.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: I think that the stream flowing in and out of
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: the room pretends an awakening in the dreamer that what
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: she claims to be her known life is actually an
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: existential field where impulses flow in and out, and she
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: is the observer, but not the generator of the experience.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: In the tarot card, the chariot, there is a charioteer
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: and a chariot, there's a city and a town in
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: the background, but in the middle of the ground, there
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: is a field And there is a stream, a river
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: running in and out of it. And it's assigned the
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: Hebrew letter cheth, which means field. And what it's meant
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: to convey is that at a certain point, human beings
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: have the opportunity to realize that they are actually a
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: space within which events occur, which is very much similar to,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: I think, what Jung is talking about, He wants us
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: to see the psyche as a field where there are
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: autonomous figures that act independently. The ego is one observing character,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: but that we are not fully in control of what
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: flows into the psyche and what flows out. Jung also
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: intimated this when he talked about thoughts. Thoughts are like birds.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: They land, you try to capture them while they're there,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: and then they're gone. and they have an autonomous life
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: to themselves. So at 81, here in that last leg
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: of her journey, to be able to depersonalize her psyche
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: as a room that life flows into and flows out of,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: that she is neither the source of what flows in
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: nor can she control what flows out and onto whatever
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: journey moves forward, but she is tending the part of
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: the stream that she can observe and that her life
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: experience is added to the stream of life for that
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: time that she abides in that room. Her thoughts, her feelings,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: her experiences, her philosophy, her Realizations are also added to
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: the great stream of life, but that is carried beyond
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: her and has some ongoing life. So I think that
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: as strange as it may be, I think it's a
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: very profound image. And I hope that she can have
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: a sense of that. The second room with the 12
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: silent individuals who are abiding. It reminds me a little
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: bit of Jung's Seven Sermons. To me, it seems like
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: it is the room of the ancestors, perhaps, the room
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: of those souls, those abiding presences that have ever been
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: with us but not known. So they're hidden rooms, but
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: ostensibly they were there all along. Towards the end of
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: the dream, she begins to say, it's not just a house,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: but they're in my house. And that's a transition between
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: the beginning and the end of the dream, which suggests
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: these people have been abiding with her. The 12, the
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: 12 constellations, something complete, something transcendent. And I think as
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: part of the great river of life, we also come
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: into a sense that We are part of a river
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: of humanity that has extended back many, many generations. And
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: perhaps if she has children, it might extend forward these
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: many generations. That she is part of a transcendental community.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: The river running through it is, as you've already said, Joseph,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: is a beautiful image of the eternal life. of what
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 4: runs through our lives. Our lives run through our lives.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 4: I also want to go back to it felt like
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: a meditation room because that seems to echo. It was
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 4: supposed to be a bedroom. There's a small stream with grass,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: and it's S-shaped, and it's a meditation room. So it
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: all seemed to indicate this is a space not for
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: egoic activity, but it's a different kind of space, a
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: space for psyche, a space of mystery. You know, we
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: don't really know. I also want to add that you
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: mentioned the Seven Sermons of the Dead, which is one
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: of Jung's early sort of visionary experiences where he was
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: almost channeling these contents. And he wrote, furiously and got
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: all this down. And it's not discursive kind of reading
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: at all. And it's in the back of his memoir, Memories, Dreams,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: and Reflections. I don't know what to make of these
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: nine or 12 people. She could see only their heads
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: and shoulders and they didn't speak. So I'm thinking about
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: just the upper part of the body. That's what she
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: has is body image, partial body images, and no words,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 4: no sound.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: Well, so they are kind of silent observers in a way.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: And I noticed when she mentioned her feelings in the dream,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: she did mention sometimes fear. And my imagination, which I
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: don't have any way of checking, is that the fear
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: came around the people. That's the part in the dream
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: that feels a little ominous, perhaps, or could feel a
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: little ominous. I mean, a beautiful stream with a mossy
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: bank or a grassy bank flowing through the room is
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: pretty pleasant. Even though I think as you've articulated so beautifully, Joseph,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: it has these kind of very deep implications. But the
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: kind of nine to 12 strangers is perhaps slightly more ominous.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: So I think it might be a confrontation with something,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say transpersonal. And both of those numbers
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: are significant. 12, as you've said, Joseph, is associated with
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: the 12 apostles, for example.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: But, you know, nine is three groups of three, and
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: it is a number of significance. I'm thinking of the
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring. I've got
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: Tolkien on the brain a little bit today, maybe. But,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: you know, there's other important implications with nine as well. So,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: you know, there's something otherworldly about these figures. They've apparently
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: sort of been there in the house with her all along.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: Or at least for some time. So there's something, there's
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: a bit of a confrontation there with something that is
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: not quite of this world. And it's interesting that she
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: had to walk through the first room into that second room.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: So it's like the first room is kind of the
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: first mystery. But then there's a deeper mystery that awaits
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: in the confrontation with these silent observers. This kind of,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: this host, if you will.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: It also seems that she doesn't speak to them. That
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: at this moment, she's an observer. She goes into the
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: other room. She can only see the heads and shoulders.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: They don't speak. She's in a state of wonder, of questioning.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: So it seems that this is an opening salvo. As
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: often happens in initiations, as the initiate is moved between
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: these various stations or alters that the blindfold is lifted
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: just for a second and then it's put back. So
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: there's a flash and that's enough. And then in progressive initiations,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: the blindfold or the hoodwink comes off and there's more
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: dialogue or more encounters. And the stream has that just
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: a glimpse and no more to prepare for something else
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: that's going to come down the line.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: Hmm.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: I like that. And I would say that if the
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: first preparation was the S shaped meditation room, the psyche is, um,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: you know, preparing her for whatever this encounter is, you know, with,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: with kind of generosity and gentleness, you know, cause it's, it's,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: it's a beautiful image, this room.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: You know, and of course, uh, She says in the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: context that she provides that she's had a very, very
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: long marriage of 61 years. She is now very much
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: in the role of a caretaker. So I wonder if that,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: you know, a kind of acceptance of her role and
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 4: keeping active as time allows. But she has a house
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: with many rooms. This is a psychic fact, and there
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: are nine or 12 people who observe, who are present,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: who are somehow there for this mystery, perhaps initiation, as
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: you said, Joseph. the eternal and then a preparation for
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 4: what may lie ahead.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: And, you know, to be toward the end of one's
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: life and to have one's partner, you know, being ill,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: even if it's a slow process, of course, one might
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: have thoughts of mortality. And that is a whole other
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: set of unknown rooms, right?
• 1:23:57
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• 1:24:03
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• 1:24:15
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• 1:24:17
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  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life. Thank you.