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JUNG'S PARANORMAL ENCOUNTERS: Why did strange events follow him? · 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 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: I'd like to just ask a favor of all the listeners.
• 0:41
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• 0:53
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• 0:57
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Well, given that next week is Halloween, we thought we
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: would do our traditional Halloween halloween episode uh previous topics
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: have included ghosts i think one year we did horror
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: and another year we did witches we've probably done some
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: did we do zombies one year maybe anyway we're never
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: going to run out of topics but this halloween we
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: thought we would talk about jung and the paranormal it
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: turns out the paranormal was very normal for jung's family
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: especially on his mother's side And this really influenced him.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: It influenced his decision to go into psychiatry. It influenced
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: his thinking. So we're going to talk just a little
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: bit about parapsychology and paranormal phenomena, and especially how it
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: relates to Jung and the development of his thinking.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: And before we jump into that, I also wanted to
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: ask people to take a look at our Patreon page.
• 2:00
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• 2:18
  Speaker 3: air if you keep us up and running through Patreon.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: And we also have an opportunity to analyze... of patrons,
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: you get a chance to submit them to us. And
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: for instance, when we're done here, we're going to do
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: a special dream analysis for someone who sent us a
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: very spooky and slightly ghoulish Halloween dream. And we'll analyze that.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: And then we post it only for the patrons at
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: the particular levels. So if you come in at $ 10
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  Speaker 3: a month, we'll have a chance to look at your
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: dream over time. And people tell us it's really special
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: and really meaningful. So on to the paranormal.
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: And, you know, before going further, I should just mention
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: today that Deb wasn't feeling well, so she's taking the
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: week off, but she should be back next week.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: So what we know about Jung's life is that he
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: was raised in a slightly spooky home that The spiritualist
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: movement particularly had taken the United States by storm and
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: was beginning to influence some of the kind of New
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Age spirituality in Europe as well. So we know that
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: his grandfather, for instance, had a very vibrant experience.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: Of ghosts there.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is his maternal grandfather. He believed himself
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: to be just kind of surrounded by spirits. And apparently,
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: he would have weekly conversations with his first wife, who
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: was deceased, and even kind of left a chair for
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: her in his study.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: And then he would have Jung's mother stand behind him
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: and bat away ghosts that were trying to distract him
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: when he was writing for his business.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: So this is a very ancient world intruding upon Jung's,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: in a sense, modern world. In ancient times, spirits and
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: their influence were just assumed. They had amulets and ways
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: to protect themselves.
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, and in some sense, Jung's family,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: they were just, they were sort of just, Swiss peasants.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: And these kinds of experiences would have just been kind
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: of taken for granted. So Jung's mother had strange experiences
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: so frequently that she actually kept a diary exclusively to
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: document these. You know, Jung was born in 1875. And
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: on his father's side, it was his father was a
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: minister and you know, his grandfather on that side was
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: a minister, he kind of come, he comes from this
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: kind of religious background on his mother's side. There's this
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: long history of mediumship or clairvoyance or other such phenomena.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: And again, it's just kind of taken for granted. But
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: then also, you know, what's going on in the outer
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: world is a scientific worldview is becoming increasingly the norm.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: And that's kind of replacing older beliefs. And That's the
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: moment that Jung enters the world. And in some sense,
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: his whole opus is about trying to square these different perspectives.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: And they immediately, in the psyche of this young man,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: kind of present themselves as this core conflict that he
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: feels drawn somehow to address.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: And this leads into his later writings about experiencing himself
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: having two personalities. That one personality being part of this
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: modern world that's familiar with school and family and the
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: culture that he's embedded in. And then he becomes aware
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: of personality number two. That over time he begins to
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: feel is like a monastic 12th century personality that lives
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: in a world of mysticism and spirituality and ancient beliefs.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: And we have a sense of this in the Red Book.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: And he talks about the spirit of the times and
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: the spirit of the depths. These two powerful perspectives that
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: speak to each other, sometimes complement each other, but often
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: conflict with each other.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: And one of the important things about Jung is he
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: wasn't willing to just say, well, the personality number two
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: part isn't important or it doesn't exist or it doesn't
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: matter or it's nothing but. There's something there that's important.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And then the task becomes translating that into the language
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: of personality number one. And you see this in the
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: collected works when you read it. He's always talking about, oh,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: I'm a scientist. You know, he'll often say that. Where
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: he's trying to kind of take these phenomena and explain
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: them in a way that doesn't explain them away. if
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: that makes sense. He's not trying to say it's, oh,
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: it doesn't, it's nothing but. But he's trying to create
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: a frame in which they can be understood. And by
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: the way, where he eventually goes with this, of course,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: is the theory of synchronicity. And we can probably talk
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: about that in a minute. But let's just go right
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: to MDR and share some of these stories, if that's okay.
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: And for those who may be new to this, MDR
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: is Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, which is Jung's autobiography.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: So he's writing about being a young man. I believe
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: this happened maybe after his father had died. So he
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: was now kind of the head of the household. And
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: he was at this point in life where he was
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: having to make a decision about what career he was
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: going to go into. He says, during the summer holidays,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: something happened that was destined to influence me profoundly. One
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: day I was sitting in my room studying my textbooks.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: In the adjoining room, the door to which stood a
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: jar my mother was knitting. That was our dining room,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: where the round walnut dining room table stood. The table
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: had come from the dowry of my paternal grandmother and
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: was at this time about 70 years old. My mother
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: was sitting by the window about a yard away from
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: the table. My sister was at school and our maid
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: was in the kitchen. Suddenly, there sounded a report like
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: a pistol shot. I jumped up and rushed into the
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: room from which the noise of the explosion had come.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: My mother was sitting flabbergasted in her armchair, the knitting
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: fallen out from her hands. She stammered out, what's happened?
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: It was right beside me and stared at the table.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Following her eyes, I saw what had happened. The tabletop
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: had split from the rim to beyond the center and
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: not along any joint. The split ran right through the
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: solid wood. I was thunderstruck. How could such a thing happen?
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: A table of solid walnut that had dried out for
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: 70 years, how could it split on a summer day
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: in the relatively high degree of humidity characteristic of our climate?
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: If it had stood next to a heated stove on
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: a cold, dry winter day, then it might have been conceivable.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: What in the world could have caused such an explosion?
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: There certainly are curious accidents, I thought. My mother nodded darkly. Yes, yes,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: she said in her number two voice. That means something.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Against my will, I was impressed and annoyed with myself
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: for not finding anything to say. Some two weeks later,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: I came home at six o'clock in the evening and
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: found the household, my mother, my 14-year-old sister and the maid,
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: in a great state of agitation. About an hour earlier,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: there had been another deafening report. This time, it was
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: not the already damaged table. The noise had come from
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: the direction of the sideboard, a heavy piece of furniture
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: dating from the early 19th century. They had already looked
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: all over it but had found no trace of a split.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: I immediately began examining the sideboard and the entire surrounding area,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: but just as fruitlessly. Then I began on the interior
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: of the sideboard. In the cupboard containing the bread basket,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I found a loaf of bread, and beside it, the
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: bread knife. The greater part of the blade had snapped
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: off in several pieces. The handle lay in one corner
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: of the rectangular basket, and in each Of the other
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: corners lay a piece of the blade. The knife had
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: been used shortly before at four o'clock tea and afterwards
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: put away. Since then, no one had gone to the sideboard.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: The next day, I took the shattered knife to one
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: of the best cutlers in the town. He examined the
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: fractures with a magnifying glass and shook his head. This
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: knife is perfectly sound, he said. There is no fault
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: in the steel. Someone must have deliberately broken it piece
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: by piece. It could be done, for instance, by sticking
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: the blade into the crack of the drawer and breaking
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: off a piece at a time, or else it might
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: have been dropped on stone from a great height. But
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: good steel can't explode. Someone has been pulling your leg.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: And Jung ends the story by saying, I have carefully
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: kept the pieces of the knife to this day.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: And this experience of a kind of explosive event in
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: the psychic atmosphere is something that Jung would continue to experience.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: He came to call this a catalytic exteriorization experience, that
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: something would be happening in the field of the psyche.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: In one experience with Freud, when they were debating he
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: had this enormous hot tension that was building in his
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: solar plexus. And at the moment when the energy released,
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: there was a loud cracking noise that came from a bookcase.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: And then a short time after he began to feel
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: the tension building again, and he had mentioned to Freud,
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: I can feel this is about to occur a second time.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: The loud cracking occurred a second time and Freud was
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Perhaps Jung was as well, but his curiosity led him
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: to want to speculate about these things, led him into
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: a great adventure.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: And we're right in this area, I think, where we
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: can talk about how these occurrences kind of affected his
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: thinking and hit the development of his career. The first
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: incident that I read out, that was decisive for him
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: in choosing to go into the field of psychiatry. So
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: he had been choosing between that and another specialty. And
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: it was partly that experience with the table and the knife.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: that made him decide to go into psychiatry. So it
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: was kind of critical. What I read was from Memory
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Streams Reflections, as we said before, and that was written
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: at the end of his life. So he had the
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: knife at the end of his life, which makes me
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: think that it must still be in the possession of
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: the young family. So that would be a fascinating artifact
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: to see someday. Maybe it will come to light. But Joseph, the,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: you know, the, what you're referencing with Freud, I mean,
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: this is also very interesting. Apparently in their very first meeting,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: you know, we, we, we have this great story about
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: him going to, he'd been writing to Freud and then
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: he goes to Vienna and they, they sort of have
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: this incredible, like, you know, first date where they, they
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: talk late into the night. But, but one of the,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: one of the first questions that Jung puts to him
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: when they You know, they have lunch together and then
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: they go off into a room and Jung says, I
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: want to know, what do you think of paranormal phenomena? And,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: you know, Freud says, well, it's just ridiculous. And we're,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: you know, we're not going to, he just sort of
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: denies the whole thing, which, you know, becomes a critical
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: issue for them, doesn't it? And then there's this, you know,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: kind of encounter that you were talking about where Jung
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: feels like, no, there's something here and I need you
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: to acknowledge it.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Jung was looking for an explanation, a sane, reasonable explanation
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: for himself that didn't force him to have to split
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: off his lived experience, but a model of psychology that
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: would allow him to accept these strange phenomenon and still
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: include them in a normal sense of self. And for Freud,
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: perhaps dealing with less adaptive personalities, he was more prone
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: to want to analyze, deconstruct, and dismiss what he would
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: have thought as abnormal experiences. Jung undoubtedly was interested in
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: the reality principle in as much as he wanted people
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: to be adaptive. But he once famously said that the
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: difference between somebody who is, forgive the language, but crazy,
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: and someone who's sane, is that the person who's sane
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: knows when to not disclose their strange experiences. A lot
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: of people are having extraordinary experiences or talking about them
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: out in the open all the time and being marginalized.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: And Jung felt, you know, if you had just a
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: little more adaptive persona, you'd actually navigate the outer world
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: with a little more savvy without having to totally deconstruct
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: this magical, mystical dimension of the personality. So I think
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: that was disappointing, undoubtedly, to Jung, because he was hoping
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: that somebody would help explain these fantastically strange things that
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: were happening or had happened in his family.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: And at that time, you know, both Freud and Jung
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: were looking for the kind of the big ideas, the
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: big theories that were going to explain unconscious life. Freud's
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: big idea was the sexual theory that, you know, that
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: kind of the life force, the libido for Freud was
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: sexual energy. And it was what happened to this that
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: really determined what was going on in the unconscious, what
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: was going on in dreams. where there was a blockage
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: of energy or neurosis, it kind of all went down
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: to the sexual theory. And Jung, right from the beginning,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: was not really sure that that was the case. And
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: he was wondering about these other things. There's this point
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: in Memory Streams Reflections where Jung talks about Freud exhorting
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Jung to make the sexual theory an unshakable bulwark against
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: the black tide of occultism. So Freud really wanted this
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: to be an explicitly scientific theory. He was going to
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: use this theory of the sexual drive and our relationship
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: with it to explain psychopathology. And he wanted Jung not
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: to be thinking about the parapsychological and to line up
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: behind him in favor of the sexual theory.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Freud was very much a rationalist in a lot of ways.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: And in his essay, future of an illusion where he
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: was talking about religion and religious fantasies as a defense
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: against existential anxiety. So he really felt that facing concrete
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: sensate reality and the concrete objects and responsibilities around us
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: that that constituted healing and wholeness and anything that seemed
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: to move people away from those very concrete relationships was
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: highly suspicious and had to be kind.
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: Of analyzed away.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: For Freud also, his sense of the non-conscious dimension of
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: human personality was also difficult for Jung to understand. For instance,
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Jung thought that the ego was the point of consciousness.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: that it was consciousness itself. But Freud would talk about
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: how the ego would act against its own purposes and
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: not know that it had done it. So the ego defenses,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: let's say like denial, were in a certain way a
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: choice that the ego was making and then forgetting. The
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: right hand wouldn't know what the left hand could do.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: And Jung said, well, that doesn't really make sense to me,
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: that there has to be a truly unconscious dimension to
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: the personality that has its own personality and its own dimensions.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: And that also was very different between Freud and Jung,
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: that there was something, Jung was okay with the uncanny.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Where Freud seemed to be comforted by believing everything was
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: really knowable and mysteries were just unsolved erotic conflicts, which
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: of course sometimes was true.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: It wasn't always true.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Jung at some point has this great phrase that
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I've already kind of alluded to today. He said, why
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: is it when you try to explain something, people think
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: you're trying to explain it away? And I love that distinction,
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: you know, because I think Jung did want to understand.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: He did want to understand, but he wasn't trying to
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: sort of prove that there wasn't something remarkable there, you know.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: So then we get, you know, the theory of synchronicity eventually,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: which is, you know, kind of magical in a way. But,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: you know, he's seeking for understanding without asserting a kind
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: of ego dominance. Because when you're saying, well, like you said, Joseph,
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: this is just an unresolved sexual tension or something that's
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: manifesting in this way or something. It's like the moment
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: in Scooby-Doo when you rip the mask off and it's like, oh,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: it's just the bad guy. There's nothing magical here. We
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: can just reveal that it's some unresolved sexual tension. Jung
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: is like, no, there's something there. It may be unknowable,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: but there's something there. So it's this fundamental, and I
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: think this is what you were getting at, it's this fundamental,
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: I want to say like sort of belief in the
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: autonomy of the objective psyche. For Jung, that's where it
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: went to, and there was this tremendous respect for the unconscious.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: Well, for Jung, he saw.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: cosmologies, ancient and modern, as kind of artifacts that actually
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: were describing the relationship of the ego to the unconscious,
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: that there was something so far beyond the conscious mind
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: that we were embedded in. He felt very sure that
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: the ancient cultures and religions intuited this relationship and found
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: ways to describe it imagistically. But coming back to what
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: you had said about understanding something rather than reducing it
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: or explaining it away, another way I would think about
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: it is that Jung was interested in being contactful. He
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: wanted to find a way to contact as much of
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: these mysterious dynamics inside himself, and he understood that the
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: image-making function of the human psyche would create a bridge
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: between his waking mind and whatever this strange and interesting
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: inner world was. And he surmised that, and this was
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: based on many ancient philosophies as well, is that the
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: image that presents to the human psyche has a a
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: greater reality, which he called the archetypal world, but a
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: greater mysterious reality that was, in a sense, kind of
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: spiraled backwards from the image. But all we could tolerate, perhaps,
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: or understand is the apparition that those forces present to
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: us in order to interact, which also suggests, and this
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: is more I was going to say this is more
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: me than Jung, but now that we have the Red
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Book email, maybe we're on the same page.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: That these transpersonal forces or non-personal forces have an interest
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: in us.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: Even as we have an interest in them.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: And the collected works, I think he really kept away
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: from that, you know, writing for his fellow clinicians, not
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: wanting to seem too spooky. But then when we have
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: access now to his.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: More private writings, he really.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: had a much more lively experience with these inner worlds.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm listening to what you say, Joseph, and
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking about how this has to do sort of
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: with Jung's whole worldview. I like what you're saying about
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: seeking contact because if you think about it, what we've
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: been talking about, about the difference between explaining and explaining
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: away and how Jung felt about this versus how Freud
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: felt about this, it's a little akin to how they
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: both understood dreams. Because, you know, Freud, to a certain extent,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: did feel like the dream was like the moment in
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Scooby-Doo where you rip the mask off. It's like, oh,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: I've got the code. Now I'm going to tell you
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: what the dream means, you know, and that it's sort
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: of like it can be pinned down. It can be
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: kind of dissected by consciousness, that consciousness can prevail over
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: the dream sensor who's trying to hide the meaning, and
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: we can sort of be smarter than the unconscious, as
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: it were. Whereas Jung sort of felt like, no, wait
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: a minute, this intelligence that is present in dreams is
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: not being sneaky, and actually, to follow up on your point,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: kind of has an interest in us, and wants to
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: communicate something and we can approach it with a kind
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: of reverence and maybe engage with it and maybe there's
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: something to learn there, but it can never be fully
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: known or fully pinned down. The further place that this goes,
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: of course, is meaning. I mean, if you're in a
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: world where anything that's a little bit spooky or mysterious
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: just needs to be explained better, then you're really living
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: a kind of sawdust existence where there is no meaning
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: beyond what you see on the surface. Or if there is,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: it just requires a code break. And then you're going
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: to be able to know it in its entirety. Whereas
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Jung said, no, there's this realm of mystery that is
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: essentially unknowable, but we can have a relationship with it.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: And of course, you know, in the first instance, you know,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: if we live that life too much, we can really
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: feel like there's no superordinate meaning. There's nothing transpersonal. There's
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: nothing we can't know fully or explain. Whereas in Jung's scenario,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: we can have a relationship with that which is larger
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: than ego. And then suddenly... We're living in a meaningful world.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: And so we could sum the differentiation up between the
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: two as Jung was interested in the encounter and Freud
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: seemed to be interested in deciphering.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: And when I think about the spirit of the encountering,
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: that brings me again very much back to Jung's upbringing.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: That again, in that spiritualist community, that the medium would
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: move into a highly receptive state, which, when we look
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: back now, is very much like active imagination, dropping into
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: that liminal state in a state of openness, a kind
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: of beckoning in that particular cosmology, a beckoning for the
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: spirit of the deceased to come and be in consult,
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: to have an encounter with the medium and perhaps the
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: people in the room. Whether or not we believe in
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: mediumistic work is secondary, but that state of openness, curiosity,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: a state of respect for what might present itself, and
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: that attitude that the ego is having a relationship, an
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: encounter with something that's outside itself, all of those principles
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: that were demonstrated in a way that was very impressive
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: to Jung I think, continued to prepare him to be
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: able to psychologize that in some ways and be able
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: to instruct other people to go in with a similar spirit.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: And something I think we brushed against is Jung was
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: so interested in this as a phenomenon that he wrote
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: about this as his university doctoral dissertation, that he had
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: been attending sessions that his cousin had been conducting who
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: was also part of that larger community and he was
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: so fascinated by the way that her personality would change
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: and how he had described it is his, her waking
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: personality was rather plain and ordinary and not terribly inspired
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: or terribly sophisticated. And then when she would relax into
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: this liminal state, this other personality would come forward that
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: was very sophisticated, very urbane, rather if I'm remembering this right,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: might even have spoken more than one language, but was
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: just so remarkably different. He developed the theory of the
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: progressed image of the ego to explain this to himself
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: in one way, that perhaps this very sophisticated feminine figure
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: inside of her was prefiguring how this young woman would
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: be decades forward. But privately, and because of his upbringing,
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: There was something more uncanny. And perhaps this other female
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: presence had its own independent existence in the unconscious and
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: perhaps a universal dimension to it. Right.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: And perhaps we'll talk more about seances and mediumistic activity
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: in a future episode. But just to highlight that a
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: bit more, apparently he'd been attending the seances with this
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: cousin who, by the way, was a priest for our
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure how I'm saying, I'm probably saying that wrong.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: But in other words, it was a cousin on his
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: mother's side, this family with all of these kind of
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: paranormal things happening all the time. He'd been attending them
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: for a long time and then decided to write about it.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: But I think in the dissertation, he makes it sound like, oh,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: I thought I'd study this subjectively. So I started going.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: So he kind of hides how involved he was in this. But,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: you know, the interesting thing, Joseph, is he does try
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: to kind of write about it scientifically, but... suggesting that
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: this kind of prefigures. But even there, as a young man,
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: he's not dismissing it. He's saying there's something legitimate about
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: what's coming through. It might not actually be a cult.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: There's some legitimate thing happening. And we understand today that
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: his exploration of his cousin's mediumistic abilities in some way
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: prefigured his notion of the South. that part of us
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: that knows more that is greater than ego so even
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: you know he moves it to a kind of psychological
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: register but you know there is something mystical about the
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: idea of the self so he was always dancing in
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: this place where he's he's trying to um deepen understanding
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: of these concepts in a way that doesn't leech out
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: the mystery which is a difficult thing to.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Do And he wants to be in the presence of
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: people that have developed a kind of receptivity to something
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: that they could shift in and out of these ordinary
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: states of consciousness. But that, as it is for most
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: of us, highly compelling. When I think now about this
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: meteoric rise of interest in psilocybin treatments, I mean, this
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: is all... pushing into this experience of a non-ordinary dimension
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: and that somehow finding a way to encounter these numinous
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: images or experiences can offer us something that has not
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: been appreciated by this very rationalistic model that most of
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: us have kind of lived in. Mm-hmm.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Well, and we're really hungry for it. And we know
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: there's something to it, too. We know there's something to it,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: you know. You know, you were talking about the incident
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: that occurred with him and Freud when Freud was like, nope, nope,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: there's nothing to it. And then Jung is like, there's
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: this loud crack and then another one that he predicts.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: And he related that to this rising tension in his body.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: You know, his first experiences of the paranormal, they started
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: when he was about seven. So it was a period
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: of time when his parents were sleeping apart and there
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: was a lot of tension in the household. And he
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: saw coming from his mother's door a faintly luminous, this
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: is from Memory Streams Reflections, a faintly luminous indefinite figure
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: whose head detached itself from the neck and floated along
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: in front of it in the air like a little moon.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: So the interesting thing about this is that what was
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: going on in the household, right? His parents must have
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: been going through something really difficult, the little boy, Carl,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: you know, kids can pick that up. And then it manifests,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: you know, in this particular way, just like there was
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: tension in his relationship with Freud, and it kind of
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: has this outer manifestation. So it's like, you know, the
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: interesting thing is something inner, an emotional state has this
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: impact on something in the outer world. The other example
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: of that famous one, which we've mentioned before on the
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: podcast is what happened after his break with Freud, which was,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: you know, terribly difficult for him. And, uh, he, there
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: was all of this tension in the household and the
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: whole house could sort of feel it. And then there's
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: this bell starts ringing and the bell that hangs right inside,
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: it has a pull cord on the outside. If you've
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: been to the house, that bell is there. It's a big,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: heavy bell. And it was ringing furiously. And there was
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: no one on the other side of the door. And
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: several people witnessed this. And that, I think, was the
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: same day when there was just this inrushing of Jung
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: of this kind of energy. And he just sort of
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: just wrote the seven sermons to the dead, you know,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: which I think begins, you know, we are the dead
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: and we have returned from Jerusalem where we found not
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: what we sought. And it's almost like he was just
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: kind of channeling, you know, these voices, these kind of
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Gnostic voices.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: And just to make it a little more oppressive, is
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: that doorbells back then weren't like the doorbells of today.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: They were totally mechanical. Like you moved a little lever
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: that pulled a string that moved a physical bell in
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: the home. So it wasn't like a little electrical short,
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: you know, happening in your modern doorbell.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: When I toured the house back in 2019, I saw
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: the bell. And I remember I said, we were being
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: given the tour by, I want to say it was some...
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: was a young woman who is of the family. I
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: can't remember now exactly what her, if she was a
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: great granddaughter maybe or something. Anyway, I just looked at
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: the bell. I said, that's the bell. And she goes, Oh,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: you know the story. I said, yes, of course I
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: know the story. I said, that's a, that's quite a bell.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just imagining that happened. But, But in
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: any case, the interesting thing is, and this gets a
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: little bit into ghosts, but just to revisit this a bit,
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: poltergeist phenomenon, there are some well-documented cases of poltergeist phenomenon
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: that are not easily explained. Poltergeist phenomenon tends to constellate
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: around adolescent females. And it's been hypothesized that this is
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: because that can be a tremendously tumultuous time in a
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: young person's house. So there's like a lot of sort
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: of psychological tension in the household. So I think I'm
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: trying to pick up this theme that there might be
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: a way that psychological life gets exteriorized or kind of
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: catalyzed in these really remarkable ways. And then I'm going
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: to share a personal story that again, shared in an
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: earlier version of the podcast, but it's worth, it's worth sharing.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: So I must have been about seven or eight and
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: I had experiences multiple times where I woke up and
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: I saw a man standing over the bed and it
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: was a spectral vision. It wasn't like, uh, didn't, I
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: didn't think there was an intruder. I understood immediately that
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: it was a ghost. It was terrifying and I always
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: stood up, turned on the light, and went away. The
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: last time, I would always call for my mom. My
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: mom would always say, next time, why don't you just
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: ask him what he wants? Because my mom was a
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: youngie at heart, right? And I never was brave enough
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: to do that. But I love that that.
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: Was what she told me to do.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly. But the last time that it happened, I
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: was a little bit older. It was a Sunday morning.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: I had just woken up. The blinds were still drawn,
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: but there was light in the room. I could hear
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: my parents in the next room. They were getting ready
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: to go to church, I think. And I was sitting
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: on my bed awake. And he appeared in the doorway,
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: walked over, sat down next to me on the bed.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: And I was sitting like this. For those of you
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: that are only listening, I sort of had, you know,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: was resting my cheek on my hand as I sat there.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: And he mirrored me and looked at me. And I thought,
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: am I going to ask him what he wants? Or
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: am I going to run? And I chose the latter.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: But I don't think he came back. Then when I
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: was an adult... I was talking about this with my mom.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: I must have been in my 20s. And she said, oh, yes.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: One night I woke up and there was a man
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: standing next to my bed. And I just watched him
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: and then he sort of dematerialized. And a minute later,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: you were shouting for me, saying that there was a
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: man standing over your bed. And I said, what?
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: What?
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: You never told me that you saw the ghost too.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: She said well honey it wasn't a ghost it was
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: really just a psychic you know psychic projection And I
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: was like, okay, you know, whatever you say. But, you know,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: the interesting thing is that she was interpreting it very
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: much as Jung might have interpreted it. Although I think
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Jung was a little coy. He never says he doesn't
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: believe that there could be such a thing as ghosts.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: In fact, I rather think he did. But at least
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: in places, he said, well, this might be like a
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: kind of a manifestation of a psychological phenomenon, kind of
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: an outer manifestation of it. So, I mean, I think that's,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: That's really interesting. I haven't had many of those experiences
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: in my adult life, although I've had, you know, some
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: that are difficult to explain. But, you know, if we
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: think about the implications of psyche being able to affect
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: the material world in some way, you know, like with
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: the knife, the implications are really interesting.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: And this leads into Jung's much later work, with synchronicity
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: and Wolfgang Pauli, that as he's looking at Wolfgang Pauli's dreams,
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: and they're also developing something of a collaborative relationship, and
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: Pauli was a physicist, that they both get really interested
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: in this relationship between what's happening mathematically and what might
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: be happening in terms of this psychological field. And this
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: all funnels to a number of points, but one of
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: the things that Jung and Pauli both land at is
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: that in terms of the primal state of the universe,
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: there's energy, there's matter, and there's psyche. That Jung posits
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: psyche as the third substance out of which the primal
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: universe is constructed. And from that standpoint, which I think
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: is also rather Vedic, They called it chiti or mind,
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: universal mind, having been from the beginning. But that this
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: world of psyche lives in an extension from this very subtle, abstract,
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: mental possibilities all the way into matter itself. And so
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: when he's writing about UFOs, and he talks about the
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: structural UFOs.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: The objects... which.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: Pilots are observing, which by the way has been released
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: by the government now, you can actually see these videos
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: that the military has released, that they actually are true
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: objects because psyche extends into the physical world and can
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: affect physical phenomena. So a lot of times when we
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: say that it's psyche or it's psychological, people, I think,
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: assume it's some kind of a temporary hallucination that's only happening.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: That you're explaining it away.
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: Explaining it away, or just an individual has a funny
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: little glitch in their brain. But Jung is saying something
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: much more radical.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: Which is that these are objects, and he thought perhaps
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: they were even temporary objects that would be constellated literally
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: in time and space, and it might also leave or disperse,
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: much like the apparitions that your mother and you were describing,
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: but it is an actual object.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And again, it goes to this notion of
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: kind of the objective psyche, that what happens in the
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: inner world has its own objective reality and sometimes manifests
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: in the outer world.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: Jung was also clearly really interested in kinetic psychic phenomena.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: like the cracking of the table, the breaking of the
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: bread knife, the ringing of the doorbell, the booming sounds
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: that came out of the bookcase.
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: And in my own.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: Adventures in alternative spirituality, the phenomenologic world, to me, is
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: very involved with Kundalini work. Because the idea of Kundalini,
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: which is partly physical, partly biological energy that also has
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: a spiritual dimension to it, which I know I've said
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: this many times on the podcast, but perhaps for people
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: that are new to it, kundalini means serpent in Sanskrit.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: And in many yogic traditions, there's an observation that through
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: various practices, a certain vitality and energy that's coiled in
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: the sacrum can begin to distribute itself through the body
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: and then create extraordinary effects, particularly with consciousness. But something
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: that kundalini practitioners have spoken to is that when those
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: intensities get to a certain pitch, strange physical phenomena can
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: happen in the short term or the long term. So
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: I'd like to tell you a wonderfully spooky story. So
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: this was actually... maybe just five years ago, it's not
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: that long ago, I was doing a particularly intense cycle
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: of spiritual work. And my spiritual work, which involves Kabbalah,
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: also involves a fair amount of work with Kundalini. So
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of kinetic physical stuff as well as
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: chanting and prayer and lots of other kinds of mysticism.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: All will come together in this container. So I've been
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: doing this pretty rigorously. And I was at the end
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: of the day, and I was just moving some objects
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: that I normally set up in my meditation space. And
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: so there was a votive candle that actually had not
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: been lit. So it was not hot or cooling down.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: And as I leaned over and just touched the tip
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: of the votive candle, it split in two and fell
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: into halves in a way that was just inexplicable.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: You mean the candle, the wax?
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: No, the glass container.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: The glass.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: As I just touched it, split in two perfect halves.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: That is not something that happens with any regularity, but
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: it reminded me of that just strange and uncanny state
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: that perhaps even the body can get into, where somehow
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: strange things can happen, much like Jung having this fire
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: in his abdomen that predicted this explosive sound.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: So here's my question for you about that story, which
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: you had not told me before. So this happens with
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Jung and his conversation with Freud. And by the way,
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: that happened... the day that Freud kind of declared that
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Jung was going to be his heir and his successor.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: So it was a tremendously charged time. And, you know,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: you don't have to sort of spill the beans, you know,
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: in a personal way. But is there a way that
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: you make meaning out of that experience? Like why that
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: happened then? Do you have an understanding of that for yourself?
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: I don't.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: Honestly, because it was, I don't recall it being a
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: particularly emotionally turbulent time. I don't know that I was
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: doing the spiritual work at a, at a greater intensity
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: than I had at other times. And unlike, um, Jung,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: I didn't have some strange internal state again, beyond the
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: intensities that I would normally experience doing these kinds of practices.
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: So it's, it's, um, It was particularly unexpected, particularly strange.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: I'll take a picture of it. I saved it, of course,
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: and I'll take a picture of it. We can put
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: it up on Instagram just as a strange occurrence. And
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't be surprised if perhaps many of us or
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: many of our listeners have had even just a single
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: totally inexplicable kinetic event touching something and it breaks. Or
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: another uncanny story I just want to tell though is,
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: this is probably 20 years ago when I was doing
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: some consulting work in Maryville, Tennessee, and I had befriended
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: a clinical psychologist who was interested in the power of visualization.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: He wasn't terribly mystical, but he was doing some work
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: with anxiety and visualization. So we became friends. friends who
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: needed to invite me over for dinner with him and
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: his wife. And I was talking about my investigations into
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: Kundalini and this and that. And so everybody's left the room,
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: and he kind of leans in and he goes, okay,
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you a story that I really
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: would never tell. So my son, who is just in
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: the middle of adolescence, maybe he was 15 years old,
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: he comes in and he's really worried. And he sits
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: down with Richard and he says, Dad, something is going
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: on that's not right. So Richard kind of leans in
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: and they're alone in the room. And so the boy
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: looks down at this teacup that's on the table. And
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: as he's looking at it, the teacup starts to vibrate
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: and violently rock.
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: And you know what?
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: At Richard and he's like, something is wrong. And Richard,
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: who is just very salty, he just leaned back and
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: he said, you know, the adolescent brain, who knows? And
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: then about six months later, this bizarre kinetic.
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: Phenomenon just stopped. It was never able to do it again.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: But it was one, just as you were saying, that
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: in these rapid, strange hormonal growth periods, neurologic periods, that
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: perhaps the brain, the psyche, many of the things can
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: suddenly and temporarily align to produce, as you were saying,
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: poltergeist activity, which generally is kinetic. It's the door slamming,
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: the window rattling activity. object affecting stuff, not just telepathy.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Things appearing and disappearing.
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: So there is something that we know anecdotally.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: You know, there was a period in my life where
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: I made a point of asking everyone, have you ever
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: had an inexplicable experience? And I will tell you, if
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: you ask people that, just about everyone under the right
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: circumstances will say, well, you know, There was this one
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: time when. And so maybe we'll encourage listeners, if you
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: want to write it into the comments section on this episode,
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: you can share your own inexplicable.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: Yes, an absolute invitation. Like, come onto our YouTube channel
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: on this episode and just tell. I would love to
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: have a hundred stories of people just telling some crazy
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: thing that happened. You know, candles would go. classes splitting,
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: knives breaking, stuff falling off the shelf that you just
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: can't explain. That would be so exciting if people would
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: jump on that bandwagon.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So just to talk maybe a little bit about parapsychology,
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: the study of paranormal experience in modern psychology, it's a
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: bit of a fringe discipline. There are a few universities
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: that have parapsychology departments. I think right now, Most of
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: the activity has kind of shifted to Europe, if I'm
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: not mistaken. But, you know, there's there been some experiences,
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: you know, the CIA has been interested in remote viewing
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: and that sort of thing. There's not really good evidence
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: for it. Or I should say, at least maybe that
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: it's controversial. One of the experiments that at least for
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: a little while people thought, oh, there's really something here
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: is known as the I think it's called the Gansfeld
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: experiment or something. You can look that up. It's G-A-N-Z-F-E-L-D.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: But it involves a receiver being in a kind of
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: light state of sensory deprivation. So your eyes are covered
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: and you're listening to kind of white noise and earphones.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: And then there's a sender who is looking at images
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: and trying to kind of convey you the images. And
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: then there's like some kind of rate, you know, so
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: the receiver will say, here's what I saw in my imagination.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: And then someone will score it and say whether or
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: not it's a hit with what the sender was looking at.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: So there have been Gansfeld experiments that show, you know,
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: it's like statistically small, but statistically significant hits. And then
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: people have looked at that and said, yeah, there was
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: methodological issues with it. So they don't really stand right now,
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: as I understand it as sort of like, we can
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: sort of explain it away, if you will. However, I
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: will say that at one point, you know, they've looked
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: at people who do better, who are more likely to
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: have hits, have certain personality traits, all of which I have.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: And at some point, I was talking with my daughter
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: about this, and she was really interested. I forget, she wasn't,
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe she was 10 or 11 or something.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: And she said, Okay, well, let's try it. Let's try it.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: So And we didn't, you know, set it up, you know,
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: under kind of formal experimental conditions. But I think I
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: just started flipping through a book randomly or a magazine
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: or something. And she's, you know, kind of got the
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: blanket over her head or something. And I was looking
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: at a giraffe. And she said, I see a giraffe.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: I was like, whoa.
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: So, you know, and actually, you know, being emotionally connected,
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: but an emotional connection between the sender and the receiver
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: is considered to be one of the variables that predicts
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: a higher rate of success. So, you know, who knows?
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe it was a coincidence, but it was interesting.
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: Definitely gets your attention.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes. I mean, it is super fun to think
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: about all of this. And I personally... like leaving a
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: little bit of room for mystery in my worldview. I
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: don't want to turn it all into sawdust or explain
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: it away. And if nothing else, it's fascinating.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: To me, it's restoring the magical universe that we definitely
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: need to be accommodated to reality, to the limits of reality.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: But we also need to have a feeling that the
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: world around us is magical and that it has a
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: kind of intelligence and because of that deserves a kind
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: of respect that there is an integrity in this secret
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: soulful dimension of the universe. And when we lose touch
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: with that, as human beings, we start acting very oddly
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: in relationship to the world, to each other, to objects.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: We can become very dangerous actually to each other, to
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: the earth. the resources and if we can restore a
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: feeling that the world the universe objects have at least
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: a magical dimension it brings a feeling quality and a
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: different kind of relationship to the phenomenon of the world
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: and a respect I think yeah.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's lovely, Joseph. I really, really like that. And
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: I think the corollary that comes up for me is
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: that voice that says, well, no, that can't be true.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: It has to be, you know, there has to be
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: a rational explanation. Not the sort of genuine urge to understand.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about something that feels a little bit more pointed.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: To me, it's smells of defense. That we need to
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: defend against the possibility that there's something we don't understand.
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: Or can't control.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Or can't control. And what if we approach to that
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: which we don't understand or can't control with a little
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: more curiosity?
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: And if we can get our fear out of the way,
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: maybe even just delight.
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: I still don't know that I would ask my visitor
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: sitting across the bed from me when he wanted, but...
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: It's aspirational.
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: It's like that moment from the movie Poltergeist.
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: All are welcome. I'm into the light.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Bringing them all in. There's something about that welcoming voice.
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: Maybe someday that'll happen.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Right. Well, in any case, we wish all of our
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: listeners a wonderfully spooky, magical, weird Halloween. And before we
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: switch to another wonderful, weird, mysterious, magical thing, which is
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: a dream, I'll just invite you all to investigate your
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: dreams further with Dream School. We do not explain them away.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: We do help you. Learn to understand your dreams, you know,
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: with appropriate reverence. So we hope that you'll consider joining
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: Dream School. There's a lot of material over there, a
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: really wonderful community, and three live events every month. I
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: do one, Joseph does one, and Deb does one. So
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: you get a chance to kind of hang out with
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: us a little bit. So thisunionlife.com, take a look at
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: Dream School.
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: Today's dreamer is a 33-year-old male who is currently unemployed
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: but financially secure.
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: And here's his dream.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: I'm gathered with friends and family in an outdoor setting
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: at our cottage. Accompanying us is also a handsome fellow
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: with long hair and his sister, who I'm hoping to
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: flirt with. We're preparing food for what seems like some
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: festival celebration. My aunt asks me to pass the cake
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: for preparation, to which I sigh and reluctantly bring it
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: to her. I can't help but feel that I'm being selfish,
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: but the truth is, I can't wait to get out
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: of there. After bringing the cake, I decide to leave.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: As I'm passing through the community of cottages set near
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: the lake, I pass by a pack of dogs that
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: are somewhat hyena-dog-hybrid-ish in appearance. but they're clearly domesticated and
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: I have no trouble. I make my way to my
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: bed to where I lay down and fall asleep. I
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: open my eyes and it's night, but I can still
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: see clearly.
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: Possibly it's a full moon.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: In front of me, I see a bed just above
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: the shoreline. facing the lake with the dismembered body of
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: the girl who attended the party. The white sheets are
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: splattered in blood and only an arm and a leg remain. Instantly,
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: I feel an electric rush of fear and terror and
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: shame wash over my body like a tsunami. as I
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: feel I've done this to her. I wake up holding
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: my dog curled up in a ball on the bed,
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: still in the dream, which is comforting. And then I
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: truly wake. And he notes that two years ago in
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: the same month, he had had a similar dream of
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: finding bones dug up at their lake with all the
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: same motions experienced. And for context, he says, I've been
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: going through an extremely difficult period in life in the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: last couple of years, and I'm just starting to find
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: meaning again thanks to you guys, young and diligently working
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: towards transformation. He says the feelings in the dream were terror,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: deep shame, and panic. And he adds that he wonders
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: if this is related to a teenage trauma that he
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: had experienced.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that happened at the location of the stream or
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: in a kind of similar place. So there's in both
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: of these streams, this one and then the one he
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: says from a couple years ago, there's this moment of
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: kind of a recognition that something horrible has happened or
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: that he has done. And these attendant emotions of terror
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: and shame So there is a sense of something, of
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: a crime that's been committed that is now coming to light.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm just going to pluck out a few elements.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: So they're gathered with friends and family. So for me,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: that's the setting which suggests, okay, we're working on the
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: family complex. It's something to do with the way that
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: the ego... experiences the family, what's evoked in it, and
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: he gives us a clue where he's in the family
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: complex and he kind of can't wait to get out
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: of there. There's something just really uncomfortable, as it is
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: for many of us when we're young. We're trying to
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: separate out from the family, or perhaps there's just a
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: lot of unfinished childhood tension.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: So it's difficult.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: And the problems begin when he decides to leave. It
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: seems really important to me. So he's not going to
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: face something in the family and he's going to kind
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: of separate out. So once he leaves, or in a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: sense refuses to be conscious, because that's what it means
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: for the ego to leave a relationship with something, it
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: falls out of consciousness, and he's out in the community
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: and there is a strange instinctive hybrid, which is this
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: dog hyena, a pack. So we're now in some kind
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: of an unusual, instinctive part of the psyche, which also
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: has intruded because he's still in the neighborhood. He's out
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: of the family cottage, but he's still out and about
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: in the periphery. But something To me, that seems at
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: least primal and perhaps dangerous. Even a pack of wild
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: dogs that had just been domesticated at one point, if
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: they're running around as a pack, that would get your attention.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: Something's on the loose. He says they're clearly domesticated and
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: they don't give him a lot of trouble, but that's
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: the first uncanny event.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: You're right about that. Where would you take it? So
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: I'm really curious. I'm not sure what to do with
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: this dream. But I'm curious about the aunt. And I'm
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: a little disappointed we don't have any association because she's
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: sort of the named person in the dream. You know,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: there's the man with the long hair and his sister,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: the woman who winds up being murdered. But we don't
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: have a sense that those are real people in waking life.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: So I'm curious about this aunt. I'm assuming he has
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: an aunt and And I would be really interested in
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: the associations. I'm thinking about, you know, the cake. She
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: wants him to pass the cake. And he doesn't want to,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: but he does. It's like he doesn't want to sort
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: of play ball. But I'm really curious about being asked
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: to kind of play this role in this celebration. You know,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: you need to help me with the cake. And it's
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: something he doesn't want to do. So, you know, I
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: like where you're going with it, that it's kind of
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: an opting out somehow of this family. But exactly how
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: to understand that is a little bit opaque, given that
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: we don't know more. We don't know more about the family.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: We don't know more about the aunt. I agree with
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: you about the hyena, you know, which are particularly sort of.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: Frightening.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: Dangerous.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, frightening and dangerous. And they have that sort of terrible,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: chilling kind of laugh that they make. And they certainly
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: don't belong because unless, I don't have any sense that
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: this is a place in the world where hyenas occur naturally.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: So it's really unusual that they would be showing up.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: And then he leaves to go to sleep, right? He
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: lays down and falls asleep, which goes to your point, Joseph,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: that somehow this is a kind of going unconscious. And
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: then he wakes up and kind of sees the crime.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: So somehow, you know, if the dream ego is correct
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: that he's done this somehow, and I think we could
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: have an interesting conversation about that point. then it did
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: happen perhaps in between when he left the party, confronted
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: the hyena-like dogs, and waking up. So there is a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: way that he perhaps was in that hyena-like field and
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: something really untoward happened.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: So as you were talking, I was just thinking about
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: the fact that and this is very abstracting, but he
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: just seems an arm and a leg. There's nothing else
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: of the body. And then there's a fantasy of who
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: this girl may have been or that it was even
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: a girl. But the only action he took before is,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: I decide to leave. And then we discover this dismembered feminine.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: So I'm wondering if the decision.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: To leave.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: Evokes such a catastrophic feeling of shame and panic and fear.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: The decision to not go along with the family expectations.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: And while for some of you that may not seem
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: all that dramatic, but for some people saying no to
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: the family expectation can feel very frightening, almost catastrophic depending
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: on the tension or expectations in the family. So I'm
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: wondering if the separating out, the saying no to the
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: family expectations has a fragmenting and dismembering effect on the psyche,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: and that perhaps the instinctive level of the psyche is
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: activating to try to keep him together, to not fragment
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: as he simply trying to be independent or that the
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: family itself is perceived as a pack of hyenas.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: Perhaps.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think, uh, there's a couple of other,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: and we just don't know. We just don't have the data. But, um,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: you know, the dreamer himself felt like this might be
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: related to a trauma. So let's explore that option for
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: a minute. Cause that is certainly possible that somehow the
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: dismembered feminine might be understood to be, uh, Like an
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: image of a kind of disavowed feeling function, that something's
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: been split off, that something's been dissociated, that there was
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: something that happened, this trauma that he recalls from when
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: he was about 12, that somehow the results of it
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: haven't been able to be fully felt. So it shows
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: up in the dream as this kind of dissociated image.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: the implication in the dream that the dreamer did it
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: in some sense is accurate. That's an image of the
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: defense that we cut ourselves off from something. So the
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: girl would be this girl that he wants to flirt with,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: that he wants to kind of get closer to, a
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: desire to perhaps reinvigorate the feeling function. But there are
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: these emotions that have been split off because they're associated
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: with something that was too big to be metabolized when
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: it happened. So that's another possible way of looking at it.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: So I'm going to lean into.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: Your shaping of that.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: And again, there's something about the pack of hyenas.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: And the dismembered corpse.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: Because hyenas would attack something, eat it up, tear it apart.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, we watch these naturalist documentaries. It's striking to
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: see how predators will take down gazelles, etc. So there's
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: the girl, the flirting, the cake I'm leaving, hyenas, and
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: the dismembered girl. So there's There's something about how to
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: relate to the environment of desire, the environment of the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: instinctive sexual dynamism. You know, people, young men flirt because,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: you know, they have sexual curiosity and emotional curiosity. And
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: something in the flirting, could we say the if-then proposition,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: the flirting conjures the pack. of hyenas who then dismember
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: the object, the exciting.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: Object, because there's a problem.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: There's a problem with the ego being in a state
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: of erotic curiosity. And there's something too primal.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: Interfuse that.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: Now we're squarely in Freud's territory, right?
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: Squarely in Freud's territory.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: And it's possible, you know, the trauma might have disrupted
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: this young man's ability to feel okay about his sexual desire.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: And so now any kind of sexual tension that comes up,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: it feels like there's a pack of hyenas inside that's
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: going to dismember someone. And that also tracks with his,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: he mentioned not just terror, he mentioned shame. So that,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: you know, was it somehow shameful to feel desirous? I'm
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: still curious about the cake because I'm not sure what
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: to do with that. But yeah, so we're poking around
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: in the dark here a little bit, but we're just
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: sort of trying on different hypotheses.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: And this dream was submitted fairly recently. We know, based
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: on some of the more recent surveys, that young men
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: are also extremely anxious about how they can communicate their
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: psychosexual needs in the environment. The fear that if they
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: were to ask, this is actually some research I had
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: just come upon, was that 75% of young men are
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: afraid to ask a young woman out for a drink
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: to meet her because they fear that it will be misinterpreted.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: And 50% of young women say that it would be
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: a form of sexual harassment to be asked out face-to-face
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: to go out for a drink.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: Oh, my God.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: The correct way is for the approach to be very
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: slow through some kind of social media. But for a
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: young man to come physically and to make an invitation...
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: has now become, is perceived as tremendously transgressive. So I
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: could also think that there's plenty of young men that
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: are internalizing this feeling that I'd like to flirt with
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: a girl, but my flirting is now characterized as a
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: kind of pack of hyenas that's going to cause enormous damage,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: and he's left with shame and panic, and also with
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: nowhere to go. with no sense of how to catalyze
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: his just natural need to want to flirt in a party.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: So it's a dream for the collective, perhaps.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: Perhaps. This is really speculative today because, you know, it's a, but,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: you know, but it's valuable, right? To just, you know,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: what might you do given that this is the information
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: that you have? recognizing, of course, that we can't pretend
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: to know. But I do want to say that when
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: I pick the dreams, you know, I pick from the
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: top of the pile. So usually the dreams that we're
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: hearing have been submitted, you know, a day or two before.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: And most of the time, they're recent dreams that the
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: dreamer has just had. And that actually feels important to
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: me because I want our interpretation perhaps to be helpful
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: to someone in their life right now. And so I'm
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: sort of assuming that this is something that the dreamer
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: will be hearing shortly after he's had the dream. But
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: I appreciate what you're saying, that it might in some
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: way be a dream for the collective, or at least
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: describing a kind of common scenario now.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: So you were saying, Lisa, that you choose the dreams
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: that are most recent, that seem relevant perhaps even to
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: the topic. What were you going to say about this
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: particular dream in that context?
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: Well, just that there's a freshness to the dreams just generally.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: So I appreciate your kind of pointing out how this
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: image may have a broader applicability to the collective.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: And I also agree that there's something about the ant
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: and the cake And the fact that the cake is
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: implicitly going to be cut into pieces. So it may
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: seem very abstract.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: The physical body, but Eucharistically, there is this strange way
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: that that can happen. And depending on what the cake
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: represents as an extension of the ant, it's complicated. where
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: the unconscious can make these strange parallels.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: Well, what I was to say is, I am very
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: unlikely to leave a party as the cake is being served.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: I love cake. So I have no idea what this
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: dreamer's relationship is with cake, right? But one thing I
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: could imagine is, there is a turning away from desire.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh, the cake is being prepared. I want
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: out of here. That would follow on with this kind
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: of line of thinking that you and I have been exploring,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: which may not be close to what's going on, but
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: we're both wondering about it.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: And just to be more optimistic is that dreams are medicinal.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: And even though these images can seem startling and they're
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: violent or strange, The images are trying to angle the
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: dreamer's ego into a position where it can reconsider something,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: and sometimes the dreams will exaggerate something to get our attention.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: So from that standpoint, there's flirtation, the enticing deliciousness of
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: the cake, and then there's the desires turned into a
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: pack of hyenas, and then the desires exaggerated into this carnage.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: And sometimes something can be escalated to force the ego
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: to pin its attention to the question of what is this?
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: And sometimes if we have a trauma history, what happens
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: is that the traumatogenic feelings can be added into events
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: that don't deserve them because they're kind of free floating.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: So we're just intending to flirt with someone at a
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: party who you think highly of, becomes infused.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: With a level of distress.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: Terror, and shame that the actual moment doesn't deserve. And
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: the dream is perhaps trying to help the dreamer understand
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: the way these various forces collide and perhaps is trying
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: to separate them out, just that beginning of the process
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: of things being different. And maybe not all needing to
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: be piled into the moment of just wanting to flirt,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: which is harmless.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:17:44
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• 1:17:47
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• 1:17:51
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• 1:17:55
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• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.