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Mandala Archetype: How the Self Turns Chaos into Cosmos · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  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.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod. This
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: week on the podcast, we're going to talk about mandalas. Now,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: mandalas have permeated the popular culture to a certain extent.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: I think I have perhaps more than one mandala coloring book.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: But they were important to Jung, and of course, they
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: are very, very ancient. This came up for me recently
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: when I was at the British Museum and saw some
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: incredible artwork of some mandalas, some ancient mandalas that were
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: created that are there in the museum. So it inspired
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: me to have us talk about this kind of important
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: idea that Jung spent a lot of time thinking and
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: writing about.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: So like a lot of Sanskrit words, They're very plain speak. Chakra,
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: for instance, that many people know means wheel. Mandala means circle.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Very descriptive, very direct. So as part of the ancient
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: spiritual tradition, and our first evidence of this seems to
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: be from the Vedas, that there are descriptions of these
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: kind of symbols that are used to help people develop.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: The mandala, just in terms of observation, is a circle
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: often with various kinds of images that are artistically rendered
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: inside of the circle. It's used in a lot of
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: different ways. One tradition is entering into the mandala, a
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: little bit like a map, navigating through it where you
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: would then encounter deities, for instance, like an act of imagination,
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: using a mantra or or various kinds of religious texts.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: You develop a relationship with the archetype. Hopefully, if that activates,
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: it stimulates a certain kind of spiritual development inside of us.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: It's an ancient method. Many different traditions use it. In
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: the Christian tradition, we use the, or some people use the,
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, where we go
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: into active imagination. So the mandala is an ancient symbol
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: that was used in that way and in many other ways.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: And important for our purposes is that Jung took a
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: real interest in mandalas and had a very powerful transformative
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: experience in a very dark time of his own life.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: So maybe we will frame that by just bringing that up.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to be reading from his autobiography, Memory
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Streams Reflections. I'm going to read a little bit. It
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: was only toward the end of the First World War
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: that I gradually began to emerge from the darkness. Two
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: events contributed to this. The first was that I broke
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: with a woman who was determined to convince me that
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: my fantasies had artistic value. The second and principal event
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: was that I began to understand mandala drawings. This happened
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: in 1918 through 1919. I had painted the first mandala
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: in 1916 after writing the Septum Sermones. Naturally, I had
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: not then understood it. In 1918 and 1919, I was
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: in the Chateau d'Aix as commandant de la région anglaise
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: des internés de guerre. While I was there, I sketched
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: every morning in a notebook a small, circular drawing, a mandala,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: With the help of these drawings, I could observe my
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: psychic transformations from day to day. My mandalas were cryptograms
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: concerning the state of the self which were presented to
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: me anew each day. In them, I saw the self,
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: that is, my whole being, actively at work. To be sure,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: at first I could only dimly understand them, but they
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: seemed to me highly significant and I guarded them like
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: precious pearls. I had the distinct feeling that they were
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: something central and in time I acquired through them a
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: living conception of the self. The self, I thought, was
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: like the monad, which I am and which is my world.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: The mandala represents this monad And corresponds to the microcosmic
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: nature of the psyche. And I will say that that's
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: one of the things that caught me about some of
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: the mandalas that I saw in the British Museum is
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: that mandalas are supposed to be a microcosm of the cosmos.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: They're a little.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Picture of the whole world, of the whole cosmos. And
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: so there's, you know, there's this as above, so below
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  Speaker 2: thing going on. We ourselves, Jung is saying, our psyche
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  Speaker 2: is a microcosm of the cosmos as well. And both
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: of these things can be imaged by the mandala.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: I think that such an important and central idea that's
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: emerged from Jungian work is we need some kind of cosmology.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: We need a way of imagining the universe in such
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: a way that we are part of it. mathematical understanding
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: of the physics or astrophysics of the universe. All of
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: it may be very scientifically accurate, but we need to
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: find a way for our imagination to create a bridge
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: between Lisa and I sitting here having a chat and
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: what is happening at the level of the infinite. That's great. So, mandalas,
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: the gods are all drinking tea, apparently. And maybe they are.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: But this way of imagining the universe allows these archetypal
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: forces to have a relationship to us that is titrated.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: And that allows us to make the best use of
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: that strata of the unconscious or the collective unconscious. So
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: just as Lisa was reading from Memories, Dreams, and Reflections,
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Jung discovered himself drawing these circles. He had already been
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: widely read in terms of various kinds of anthropologic resources.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: And in the 1940s, Europe was still the inheritor of
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: these vast archeologic digs that they were leading in the
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: ancient world and in Asia. And this material that was
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: being discovered was being sent for analysis over to Europe
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: and Jung and other scholars finally had access to remarkable information.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: The secret of the golden flower was an ancient or
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: is an ancient Chinese treatise that Jung was able to
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  Speaker 3: find a translation of and it had a radical effect
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: on him and his understanding of that archetypal layer of
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: the psyche. So the mandala is a circle And depending
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: on the tradition, it will be arranged imagistically to bring
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: forward different elements of it. I'm going to read a
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: little section from the collected works where he also talks
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: about mandalas because he's particularly talking about an encounter he
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: had watching a woman creating a mandala and how he
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: was thinking to himself about it. He writes, The Sanskrit
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: word mandala means circle. In the Indian term for the
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: circles drawn in religious rituals. In the great temple of
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: Madhura in southern India, I saw how a picture of
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: this kind was made. It was drawn by a woman
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: on the floor of the mandampam, which means porch, in
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: colored chalks and measured about 10 feet across. A pundit
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: who accompanied me said in reply to my questions that
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: he could give me no information about it. Only the
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: woman who drew such pictures knew what they meant. The
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: woman herself was noncommittal. She evidently did not want to
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: be disturbed in her work. Elaborate mandalas executed in red
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: chalk can also be found on the whitewashed walls of
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: many huts. The best and most significant mandalas are found
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: in the sphere of Tibetan Buddhism. Now shall use as
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: an example a Tibetan mandala to which my attention was
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: drawn by Richard Wilhelm. A mandala of this sort is
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: known in ritual usage as a yantra, an instrument of contemplation.
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  Speaker 3: It is meant to aid concentration by narrowing down the
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: psychic field of vision and restricting it to the center.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Usually the mandala contains three circles painted in black or
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: dark blue. They are meant to shut out the outside
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: and hold the inside together. Almost regularly, the outer rim
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: consists of fire, the fire of desire, from which proceed
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: the torments of hell. The horrors of the burial ground
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: are generally depicted on the outer rim. Inside this is
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: a garland of lotus leaves, characterizing the whole mandala as
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: a padma or lotus flower. Then comes a kind of
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: monastery courtyard with four gates. It signifies sacred seclusion and concentration.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: Inside this courtyard, there are, as a rule, four basic colors. Red, green, white,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: and yellow, which represent the four directions and also the
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: psychic functions, as the Tibetan Book of the Dead shows. Then,
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: usually marked off by another magic circle, comes the center
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: as the essential object or goal of contemplation. This center
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  Speaker 3: is treated in very different ways depending on the requirements
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: of the ritual, the grade of initiation of the contemplator,
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: and the sect he belongs to. As a rule, it
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  Speaker 3: shows Shiva in his world-creating emanations. Shiva, according to tantric doctrine,
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: is the one existent, the timeless in its perfect state.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Creation begins when this unextended point known as Shiva Bindu,
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: appears in the eternal embrace of its feminine side, the Shakti.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: It then emerges from the state of being in itself
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: and attains the state of being for itself. Lots of
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: stuff packed into that.
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  Speaker 2: It's so helpful to hear him describe these traditional mandalas
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: and to get a sense of his own scholarship around
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: it and his own personal experience with his trip to India.
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  Speaker 2: But it's also worth pointing out that for him, the
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: drawing of the mandalas began completely spontaneously. And what he
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: tells us, and I suppose I have just a small
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: grain of salt about this, which I'll explain in a second,
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  Speaker 2: is that mandalas arise spontaneously for everyone. So he has
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: analizands coming in and they're bringing in mandalas in their
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: dreams and they're bringing in mandalas in their active imaginations.
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  Speaker 2: And my one little bit of cynicism is that we
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  Speaker 2: know that Jungian patients bring in Jungian dreams. And I
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: suspect that anyone in a Jungian analysis is likely to
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: bring in a mandala because unconsciously we know that's kind
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: of expected of us. But he finds this, and I
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  Speaker 2: think it's substantially true. I mean, this image of the
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: circle or the squared circle appears again and again and
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: again throughout religion. I mean, when you were reading that, Joseph,
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  Speaker 2: I was thinking about the Native American medicine wheel, which
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  Speaker 2: is another kind of mandala. I was thinking about a
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: lot of Christian churches will have a labyrinth. Walking the
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: labyrinth is kind of that process of contemplation that you
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: were describing, and it's a journey into the center, just
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: as it is with a mandala. So certainly the squared circle,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: the circle as an image of the world, the circle
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: as an image of the cosmos, the circle as an
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: image of totality is certainly a powerful, powerful archetypal image.
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  Speaker 3: Adding to that, clinically... Jung came to understand that the
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: mandala will constellate in dreams or very powerfully in the
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: imagination as a way to address certain things. So he
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: writes in another section, As psychological phenomena, mandalas appear spontaneously
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: in dreams during certain states of conflict and in cases
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: of schizophrenia. Very frequently, they contain a quaternity or a
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: multiple of four. So one of the things that Jung
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: was noticing is that the mandala comes as a way
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  Speaker 3: of addressing a chaotic internal state, that we have a
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: profound impulse to thrive. And when something is interfering with
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: that and we become disordered, psychologically disordered, to such an
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: extent that we may be vulnerable in profound ways, something deep,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: the self, tries to save us, tries to keep us safe.
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  Speaker 3: And one of the ways it will do that is
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: by activating mandala energy. And as that energy grows, and activates,
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: it brings forward images to carry that into the realm
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: of consciousness. And mandala symbolism is one of the ways
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: that medicine is delivered.
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  Speaker 2: So to kind of elaborate on that, Jung says in
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: that same essay, he says that mandalas serve to produce
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: an inner order. So the purpose, he would say, the
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: telos of drawing those mandalas for him, was to try
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: to make order out of the chaos of his psyche.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: And this, of course, would be an example of the
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: self-regulating function of the psyche, which Jung believed that the
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: psyche is self-regulating. When we get out of balance, we
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: do things to try to heal it. And one of
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: the ways that we can get out of balance, of course,
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: is in psychosis. So he mentioned, as you were saying, Joseph,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: that The creation, kind of the activation of the mandala
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: energy can be an effort to heal ourselves. Well, the
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Jungian analyst John Weir Perry took that up in his
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: studies of psychosis. I'm going to be reading right now
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: from his book, The Far Side of Madness, which is fascinating.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: But he gives some examples of patients, psychotic patients, so
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: patients we would probably think of as having schizophrenia, who generated...
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: these mandala-like images of the squared circle. So I'm going
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: to read just a little bit of one. So he's
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: talking about this person that he was working with. The
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: individual drew with crayons during some of his interviews, making
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: many representations of the quadrated circle in conjunction with his
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: stories of kings, victors, and saviors. So here is one
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: of the patient's descriptions of his kind of psychotic image
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: that he perhaps drew. The Garden of Paradise, with its
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: trinity and devil, and the kings of the four directions,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: were instances of this arrangement of space. The crown of
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Prince Valiant consisted of a cube surmounted by a sphere
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: from which sprang a radiation of seven stars or jewels
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: on gold streamers. The breastplate of King Richard had concentric
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: circles quadrated by two crossed swords, with signs indicating the
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: club of 300 youths who went to their sacrificial deaths
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: in war. A variant on this was a shield of
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: concentric hearts quadrated by crossed swords. And Perry goes on
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: to say, Among the parallels from the sacral kingship of
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: archaic times is the emphasis upon a world center or
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: cosmic axis, a position of most intense and concentrated potency
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: for creativeness, both in the sense of giving of life
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: and the giving of order. This was typically the ritual
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: locus of at least the king god, if not of
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: the king himself. This mythological image of the center was
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: the location of a focus of power and governance, with
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: a structuring of a sacred space around it in the
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: form of a quadrated circle, the origin of the mandala.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: This surrounding structure was at one and the same time
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: a cosmos, world, kingdom, temple, and throne room in times
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: when the archaic mythological mentality perceived these as sharing in
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: the same nature and pattern. So according to Jung and Perry,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: what happens when we fall apart in psychosis? is the
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: psyche attempts to heal itself by a constellating this archetypal
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: image of wholeness, of the cosmos, of the center, which
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: is expressed in the image of the mandala.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: Lots of rich thought in all of that.
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: I know it's a little arcane, but.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Not arcane, beautiful and meaningful. And this is the aesthetic
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: way that Jung and Jungians hold the sacredness of symbols
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: that can transform, and particularly with the mandala, symbols that
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: can save us.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's great, Joseph. I'm really glad you brought that
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: in because we had a question about that recently. I
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: think it was from one of our listeners, like, like, like,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: What is the big deal with this symbol and how
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: does it save us? And here is this way, at
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: least for Jung, drawing these mandalas saved him at a
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: dark time. They constituted a sense of wholeness.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: He had been in excruciating pain. At this point in
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: his life, he was sleeping with a pistol in the
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: bed stand next to him and he was talking to
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: the unconscious saying, if this doesn't resolve, I'm out of here.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: I am not going to live like this. And when
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: he got to that terrible nadir, that excruciating suicidal intensity,
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: he dreamt of a mandala that he had seen in
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: a town square in Liverpool, which changed the course of
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: his process and allowed his personality, which had been fragmenting apparently,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: to bring itself back together in a new way that
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: not only resolved his pain, but also helped him synthesize
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: a massive amount of unconscious material that he didn't know
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: what to do with. And having, over time, that opportunity
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: to synthesize it, it allowed him to bring forward an
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: entirely new way of conceptualizing his own and other people's psychology.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: And we have the great the great receivers of this
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: amazing information.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Would it make sense to share this Liverpool dream, this
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: mandala dream? I think it would be good because.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Puts it in real life. Right.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: I think it shows you what he's talking about. It's
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: such a beautiful dream. So this is Jung's dream. He
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: had it in 1927. I found myself in a dirty,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: sooty city. It was night and winter and dark and raining.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: I was in Liverpool with a number of Swiss, say
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: half a dozen. I walked through the dark streets. I
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: had the feeling that there we were coming from the
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: harbor and that the real city was actually up above
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: on the cliffs. We climbed up there. It reminded me
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: of Basel, where the market is down below and then
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: you go up through the Tottengassen, the Alley of the Dead,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: which leads to the plateau above and so do the
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Petersplatz and the Peterskirche. When we reached the plateau, we
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: found a broad square dimly illuminated by streetlights into which
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: many streets converged. The various quarters of the city were
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: arranged radially around the square, and in the center was
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: a round pool and in the middle of it a
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: small island. While everything roundabout was obscured by rain, fog,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: and smoke, dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: On it stood a single tree, a magnolia in a
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: shower of reddish blossoms. It was as though the tree
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: stood in the sunlight and were at the same time
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: the source of light. My companions commented on the abominable
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: weather and obviously did not see the tree. They spoke
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: of another Swiss who was living in Liverpool and expressed
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: surprise that he should have settled here. I was carried
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: away by the beauty of the flowering tree and the
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: sunlit island and thought, I know very well. why he
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: has settled here. And he goes on to say, The
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: dream represented my situation at the time. I can still
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: see the grayish-yellow raincoats glistening with the wetness of the rain.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque, just as I
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: felt then. But I had had a vision of unearthly beauty,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: and that was why I was able to live at all.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: Liverpool is the pool of life. The liver, according to
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: an old view, is the seat of life, that which
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: makes to live. This dream brought with it a sense
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: of finality. I saw that here, the goal had been revealed.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: One could not go beyond the center. The center is
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: the goal and everything is directed toward that center. Through
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: this dream, I understood that the self is the principle
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: and archetype of orientation and meaning. Therein lies its healing function. So,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: It's not that he had this dream of sort of
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: a round drawing like you see in, you know, ancient
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Tibetan pictures. But there it was, this image of a
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: square with a circle and things radiating out from it.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: And there in the center of the circle was this
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: vision of unearthly beauty. So very, very much a mandala image.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: It speaks to the way in which the dream maker
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: so generously beckons us Because it could have been a
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: circle that was boring or like a blob of dirt,
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: you know, in the middle of the water and he
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: would have just walked past it, so to speak. But
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: the fact that the dream maker so generously made that
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: island and the luminous tree so appealing, so fascinating, he
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: couldn't take his eyes off it, was a way of
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: really tethering him to the medicine in that dream. And
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: he woke and felt it. apparently, and was able to
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: set aside the despair and agony and to have some
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: trust that there is an intelligence that is guiding this process.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: And that was a rather new idea. Psychologists weren't thinking
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: that way when he had that dream or when he
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: was formulating his concepts.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: So the mandala in Jungian thought has a couple of
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: very important connections. The first is that I think you'll
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: hear is his notion of the self. And he says
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: that that dream of this kind of mandala-like configuration in
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Liverpool was kind of his intimation of the self. This
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: is where he began to articulate this idea that we
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: have a center, we have a kind of inner microcosm,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: that is whole and that we can find our way towards.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: And he called that the self. And also, the fact
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: that mandalas appear in all of these different cultures and
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: all across time, they arise spontaneously from the psyches of
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: individuals who are psychotic or struggling. And Jung said, There
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: must be a trans-conscious disposition in every individual which is
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: able to produce the same or very similar symbols at
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: all times and places. And this he names the collective unconscious.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: So it's partly by seeing these iterations of this similar
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: symbol that across many different cultures and arising again spontaneously
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: from the psyches of individuals that he says, what's going
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: on there? This is the kind of big idea about
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: the collective unconscious is what we're talking about right here
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: is that you at night might go to sleep and
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: spontaneously dream a mandala image. And it might have for
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: you a very similar feeling sense as, as Jung's Liverpool dream,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: or the sand paintings that a Tibetan monk might make,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: that there's something numinous about this. Even if we don't
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: understand it rationally, it speaks to us and our need
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: for wholeness.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: Now, when we use the example of Jung having a
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: dark night of the soul, wondering if he can survive
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: the process he's going through, We can come away thinking, oh,
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: this must be a very special, strange kind of appearance.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: But actually, in other places, Jung says, no. He says,
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: as a rule, a mandala appears in conditions of psychic
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: dissociation or disorientation. For instance, he writes, in children between
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: the ages of 8 and 11 whose parents are divorcing,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: Or adults who, as a result of neuroses or its treatment,
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: are confronted with the problem of opposites in human nature
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: causing disorientation. So those are not life-threatening situations, but the individual,
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: whether it's a child or an adult, doesn't know where
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: to stand in relationship to enormous changes that are going
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: on in their world, like a divorce, or we might
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: even imagine getting fired. Some of us have kids gradually.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: from college and then they kind of just crump. You know,
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: when they come home, they just don't know what to
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: do yet. They're not oriented to the next stage. And
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: if we're paying attention, or they're paying attention, we may
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: notice these circular representations. just showing up, and they might
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: show up in very ordinary ways. I remember an Alessandra
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: I had many years ago, and I didn't catch this
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: at the time, but they were telling me a dream,
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: and the dream had a bunch of action in it,
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: and I was asking them to describe the setting, and
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: in an off-handed way they said, oh yeah, there was
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: this strange wallpaper all over the place, just circles everywhere,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: maybe there were bubbles. And I just noted it, but
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: We talked about everything else that was going on in
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: the room, but I didn't think until a long time afterwards,
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: like the whole room was full of mandalas that were
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: playing a role in orienting this person to what's coming
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: next and getting their feet on the ground in very
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: practical and pragmatic ways.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: You know, Joseph, I like what you said about, you know,
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: kind of like just at various levels, times of life transition,
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: this might arise for us as kind of an orienting principle.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: But I think underneath that is a beautiful thing that
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: you said a few minutes ago about we need to
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: have a kind of cosmological view. We need to have
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: a relationship with the cosmos at some level. We need
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: to have some way of understanding how we fit in,
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: how we fit into the cosmos. And in a sense,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: that is what the mandala offers us. is here is
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: the microcosm and we belong to it. And it is
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: within us in some sense too. And it also arises
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: from us. So just wanna go back to Jung for
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: one second and this lovely quote. As I have said,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: mandala means circle. There are innumerable variants in the motifs
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: shown here, but they're all based on the squaring of
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: a circle. Their basic motif is the premonition of the
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: center of the personality, a kind of central point within
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: the psyche by which everything is arranged and which is
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: itself a source of energy. The energy of the central
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: point is manifested in the almost irresistible compulsion and urge
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: to become what one is. just as every organism is
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: driven to assume the form that is characteristic of its nature,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: no matter what the circumstances. The center is not felt
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: or thought of as the ego, but, if one may
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: so express it, as the self. So there, in that
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: short segment, is a really beautiful description both of the
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: self and also of individuation.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: So these symbols create bridges. between very big, powerful energies.
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: Jung is trying to describe them using this very erudite language,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: which some people can feel alienated from. But I think
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: if we relax into it, and maybe we just need
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: to Google the heck out of some of these terms,
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: we find that he's talking about something that is intimately
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: connected to all people. So here's another example of where
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: mandalas show up. I, again, had another analysis, and she
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: was talking about a very difficult childhood. And when she
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: was a child, she would spend endless amounts of time
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: twirling her hair, and that when that would happen as
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: an adult, she was a very successful businesswoman, she would
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: ponder it. And so we were talking a lot about
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: self-soothing and all the reasonable stuff. But it broke upon
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: me when she was doing it in the office that
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: what she was doing was this, just drawing circles on
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: her scalp over and over and over again. And it
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: had a kind of medicinal energy. Yes, it was calming,
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: but she was tracing a mandala on the side of
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: her head over and over and over again. And when
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: Jung had that Liverpool dream, he started every day just
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: drawing little circles on pieces of paper to conjure the
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: healing effects of the circle, of the magic circle, so
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: to speak. Now, the idea of the magic circle shows
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: up in a lot of different ways. You'll even see
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: this in Hollywood. If you have some kind of an occult,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: a film or a TV series, sooner or later, somebody's
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: going to want to draw a circle of salt, for instance,
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: on the ground. And if you hop in the circle
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: of salt, then the devilish things can't reach you. It's
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: going to protect you. Why is it that we believe that?
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: What is it about being in the center of a
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: circle that protects you from the chaos of spiritual forces
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: that seek to injure you? And it's this identification with
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: the self that when you're standing in the middle of
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: the circle, it is a ritualistic declaration that I am
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: one with a power that transcends all the circumstances of
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: my life, spiritual or material. And there is great comfort,
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: if nothing else, and perhaps even more serious benefits of
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: and boons that one has by identifying with it that way.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: So we have a bunch of dreams in DreamWise. I
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: think we have, I think our book DreamWise has something
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: like 160 sample dreams in it. And one of them
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: is perfect for this image of the mandala. So I'm
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: going to share it with you. This is from the
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: chapter on the self. I have a recurring dream of
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: walking uphill toward a little stone house overgrown with vines.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: I'm overcome with a deep sense of happiness, a sense
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: of coming home. I know as I start up the
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: hill that I will find an open door and inside
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: the interior will be a flood of golden light from
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: leaded windows. My steps quicken. The room is exactly as
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: I expect it to be. A wooden staircase is on
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: the right leading to a second story unseen from the outside.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: To the left is an archway leading into another room
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: with gleaming wooden floors. Beyond that, another arch leading deeper
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: into the interior. I walk from room to room, following
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: a path that spirals as if I am walking through
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: the coils of a shell. The deeper I go, the
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: more sacred the space becomes. Sometimes there are other people
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: with me, sometimes I am alone. As I reach the
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: center of the shell, I find a circular room. the
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: most sacred spot of all. I have to squeeze through
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: the coils to get inside. The walls have turned to
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: stone and a light comes from all angles despite the
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: tight space. I reach another door and inside there is
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: an altar, a black stone slab on which lies a
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: petrified deer antler, a strange rock, and some curious silver statues,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: curled forms, neither male nor female. I sense a presence
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: I can almost see and then I wake up. So
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: it's that journey into the center, that coiling, spiraling journey
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: into the center where she finds this circular room with
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: an altar.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: It's beautiful. And that process of going from threshold to threshold,
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: going down the journey here and there is very much
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: like being a member of our dream school, actually. Yeah.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: I knew you were going to work that in there somehow.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: It would feel like a perfect opportunity. So let me
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: just take a second that these dreams, which seem very
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: magical but also very inscrutable, what do they mean? I
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: don't live those kinds of experiences in my day-to-day life,
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: so how do I put myself into these extraordinary images
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: and extract something that's useful in a very practical way?
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: And this is one of the goals that we have
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: in Dream School, which is our online learning program. We
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: have various modules which you can listen to as recorded material.
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: If you're more of a reader, you can read the material.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: If you're a more relational person, we have live communities
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: where people come together and form Dream Schools, as well
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: as joining us because we present programming. Lisa does a
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: monthly masterclass where she works with somebody on a dream
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: in front of everybody in dream school so they get
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: a sense of that kind of dialogue. I do a
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: fireside chat, you know, once a month and I am
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: prompted by questions and processes that people have shared with
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: me and provide lectures on those topics. And Deb, her
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: generous heart, she meets with people one-on-one. They schedule hours
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: with her and she spends a little bit of time
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: with people so they can have a really individual touch
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: to that process. So if this is interesting to you,
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: and of course we hope that it is, join us
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: in Dream School and let us walk with you through
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: these various thresholds, let us be one of the many
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: people you talk to as you spiral through these extraordinary
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: sequences of images. And I can promise you that if
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: you enter into dream school with the kind of sincerity
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: that I know you must have, or else you wouldn't
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: be listening to this podcast, there are secrets inside of
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: you that are waiting for to explain themselves to you.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: And these are the kinds of secrets that can change
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: your life in rather remarkable, lovely ways. So go to
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: our website, thisunionlife.com, click on Dream School, look through it,
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: and trust your heart as it talks to you about
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: the opportunity.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Just to kind of follow up on that in a sense,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: you know, Jung's collected works are filled with beautiful artwork
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: from himself and from his analysands. of their mandala-like creations
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: that came up either in dreams or in active imagination.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: And of course, his Red Book is filled with this artwork,
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: many of which are mandalas.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: So coming full circle back to our treatment of mandalas,
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: we can learn a couple of things from Jung. The
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: circle is such a ubiquitous image. Like, I look around
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: the room. Oh, there's a circular mirror. There's a clock.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: There's a quarter on the table there. They're everywhere we look.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: It can be so common that we forget how profound
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: it actually is. You look up in the night sky
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: and you see the circular moon glowing and silvery. All
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: of these spontaneous circles that we see are connected to
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: a very deep layer of our own psychology, and particularly
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: in dreams, to ask that one question, where are the
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: circles in my dream? Which may be something that you
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: don't ask. Oh, there's a cup. That's a circle. That's
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: a bit of a mandala, et cetera, et cetera. All
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: the circles that we are contained in, all of the
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: circles that we behold, if we were to try, to
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: see them as connected to that universal principle of oneness,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: that principle of us in relationship to the great mystery,
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: could re-enchant our lives in a way that is remarkable
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: and frankly is something that we as modern folks desperately need.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: We know everything about the pragmatics of our life we
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: know what it's like to clean the house and argue
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: with a spouse and get our kids ready for school
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: and get to work on time and like we've got
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: that you know we live that life but where's the
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: magic and what i would suggest is the magic is
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: contained in every circle that you encounter and if you
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: saw that even just for a day you might notice
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: that there has magic around you i'm looking over here
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: out of a window on my porch a uh morning
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: dove has built a little nest in a potted plant
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: right outside the window and when i look in the
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: nest it's a mandala yeah it's a perfect circle with
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: little circular eggs i mean there's the magic of the
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: circle is everywhere.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: So here's a question from Christina. And Christina shared her
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: question as a voice memo. So let's listen to that now.
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: When I was in college going through a particularly hard time,
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: I was sitting in my rhetoric class and suddenly the
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: world in front of me disappeared and I was staring
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: into an azure blue space, infinite space with eyes and
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: flames and a wheel rotating in on itself. And just
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: like it was there, it suddenly wasn't. And I was
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: back in class. And so I drew down what I
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: saw on my paper.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: Later, I showed my.
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: Friend and he said, well, that's a mandala.
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: And I said, a what?
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: And he said, have you ever heard of the Tibetan
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: Wheel of Life?
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: And I said, no.
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: And he said, have you ever heard of Carl Jung?
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: And I said, no. And he said, you should look
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: those two things up.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: And so I did.
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: And it set me on a lifelong path of many things,
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: definitely being a Carl Jung fan and avid reader. And
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: so my question is, because when I work with students
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: and I work with other artists and mandala-related things, when
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: you have a symmetrical mandala, And when you have kind
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: of a mandala that has images that are just contained
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: in a circle, kind of from the Jungian perspective, what
• 45:04
  Speaker 5: is the difference between those two? And is there one
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: that's better than the other, or how would you categorize them?
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: So I'll jump in and offer just a few ideas
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: about the distinctions. So a mandala can be radically symmetrical.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: which is this kind of precise four or eight part
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: geometry and things are very evenly balanced. The colors and
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: the motifs are all very balanced. And how I would
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: interpret that, let's say if I had that in a dream,
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: that the whole design is the symbol and that nothing
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: distracts from the circular centered order. And so the image
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: therefore enacts the archetype of the self So as Jung
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: would say, it's this principle of totality that unites whatever
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: is otherwise irreconcilable. So that kind of highly structured mandala
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: usually constellates when there's something overwhelming going on. Maybe there's
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: a kind of internal chaos or there's a very radical one-sidedness,
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: which is, by the way, how we all are when
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: we're young. By the time we're in college, it's so
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: much we don't know about ourselves. And so there's a
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: lot of unconscious activation. So when we're in that kind
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: of turbulence, the structured mandala becomes the axis around which
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: your being must revolve. And so that kind of mandala
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: supplies orientation and a momentary stand still so that a
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: new integration can begin. The other, which is a more
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: pictorial or I guess I would call a narrative mandala.
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: So there's figures and animals and scenes that are inside
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: of the circle while the perimeter kind of encloses it.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: And then I would say in a dream that the
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: circle functions as a vase, an alchemical vase, and it's
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: a protecting circle. And so the emphasis shifts to the contents,
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: which often can be even antagonistic pairs of opposites which
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: are being held together. There could be mythic elements in it,
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: personal complexes that are still demanding confrontation. So there's a
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: lot of movement, but it is still being held and
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: that the self is assisting you in that. So I
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: would interpret that second kind of mandala, that the ego
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: is already capable of moving within the temenos and that
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: individuation has advanced from simply the mere possession of a
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: center to a kind of slow dramatization and conscious assimilation
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: of opposites. And the conflict may not be resolved, but
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: it is being worked through within a kind of containment.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: I'll toss it to you, Lisa. Is one better than
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: the other?
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: No, I think they just represent different aspects, you know,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: different parts of a process, really. I think that was beautiful,
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: what you said, Joseph. I think the only thing that
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: I want to comment on is her experience in college,
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: which is, you know, it goes to, you know, this
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: phenomenon that we've identified about this, that these images appear
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: to us spontaneously out of the collective unconscious. So she
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: has this incredible vision in the middle of her rhetoric class,
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: and her friend says, yeah, that's the Tibetan wheel of life.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: That's the nature of the collective unconscious.
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: And what's so wonderful is that there is this intelligence
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: inside of us that gives us this perfectly titrated little
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: recipe of things that we need in a moment in time.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: So the symmetrical mandala is the fortress built of four worlds,
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: and that's to resist disintegration. And the pictorial mandala is
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: a vessel of transformation where there's this fluidity that replaces
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: the crystalline perfection.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way to put it.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Beautiful experience. I have to say, I can understand
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: why she would Remember it so many years after.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: So here's a comment from Karina, and Karina also left
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: us a voice memo.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: Good morning.
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: Such a synchronicity. For about a week, I start drawing
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: mandalas every morning. And while I was drawing this morning,
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: I'm like, hmm, I should do a research. If there
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: are rules how to draw mandalas, So we need to
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: do certain patterns, we need to do certain shapes, or
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: it's just free association. And the second question, it's regarding interpretation.
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: Do I have to think of any, or there is
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: any interpretation in regards with mandalas? Thank you so much.
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: And also, I want to thank you so much for
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: the Dream School and, in general, for all the work
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: you're doing. Have a wonderful weekend.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: Bye-bye.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Karina.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: I love it when we get those little sweet drive-by waves,
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: you know. Yeah.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: So, what I would say about this is, no, there
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: are no rules about how to draw mandalas. I think that,
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: you know, Karina, you're feeling... somehow called to draw them,
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: which is exactly what happened to Jung. He didn't plan
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: to do it. He just found himself doing it. So
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: it was a completely organic impulse that arose from the
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: unconscious for him. I'm imagining maybe it was something like
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: that for you. And in a sense, you're letting the
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: unconscious speak through your drawing. So I would say do
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: not feel confined by the need to draw patterns or
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: shapes or anything like that. And in terms of interpretation,
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm curious what you're thinking, Joseph, but I
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: would say that maybe the most important thing is to
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: have the experience of drawing the mandala and however that
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: works on your psyche, letting that happen. But I'd like
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: to hear what you say, Joseph.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: I'm right with you on that, that there's only one
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: indispensable form, which is the protective circle. And like everything else,
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: whether there's axes or quadrants or colors or figures, that
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: should arise in the way that psyche just moves you
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: to do it. So Jung did not prescribe designs for
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: his patients. He wanted the image to autonomously emerge, which
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: you had just been talking about, Lisa. So if I
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: had to say it prescriptively, and I say this cautiously,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: if you're craving order, a kind of canonical order, which
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: might be in the spirit of Tibetan Yusa mandalas, which
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: are beautifully architecturally structured. Of course, feel free to borrow
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: the flaming perimeter and the lotus garland and the four
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: gated walls or a deity at the center. Absolutely. So
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: take on that discipline of attention. And just as Lisa
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: was saying, notice what it does or doesn't do for you.
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: And if your aim is more psychological self-observation, begin with
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: a blank circle, anchor a center point even if you
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: want to, and then let the motifs and the colors
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: assemble themselves. And in that way, you might experiment with
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: drawing with the non-dominant hand and just see what it
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: wants to do. At first, it'll feel maybe forced. Once
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: it starts flowing, you might notice that the right and
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: left hand have different needs to play in that space.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: Here's a comment from one of our patrons named silken
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: so excited for this episode i've recently become very interested
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: in and inspired by hildegard von bingen's illuminations and wonder
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: if there is a way to touch on any of
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: her divine works or mandalas thanks for all you do
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: long time fan.
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: So um It's a tricky question because it's assuming that
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: we would know about Hildegard von Bingen's stuff. I mean,
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: I have to say that when she kind of became
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: well-known many years ago, it was fascinating, and her music
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: and learning about her was an amazing thing. So I
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: have to say that I did jump online and just
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: looked at a couple of images because I didn't really
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: know how to orient to this. So I want to
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: kind of just explain that this may... not be as
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: thorough as you probably could deliver because you know her work.
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: So a couple of things that sometimes she seems to
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: use this kind of world egg imagery, and that can
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: also show up in this kind of artwork as an
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: earth disk, which is ringed by the ocean and the
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: air and the stars and land masses. I might interpret
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: that as a quaternity, that is securing a center and
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: that these cosmic layers disclose the self in this microcosm,
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: macrocosm dance. And the polarity there in her work, I
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: might think of as matter versus spirit or the tension
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: between those things, that there's an infinite and also something
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: that encircles the heavens. So the finite and the infinite
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: are kind of dancing in that imagery. So you might
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: play with that. Again, I don't feel like any kind
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: of an expert. Another image I think that I came
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: across is this idea of the quickening of the child,
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: because the divine child is such an enormous image in
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: Christian mythos. So sometimes there's a square that has these
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: kind of triple bands with eyes and fiery orbs that
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: are pouring spirit into the womb. And so it seemed
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: like the Holy Ghost was not appearing as a dove,
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: but appearing as a quadratus, a square that is simultaneously Trinitarian.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: So Jung might call that a coniuntio appositorum, where the feminine,
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: the earth, is receiving this descending pneuma, or spirit. And
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: that tension breaks I'm just shooting from the hip here,
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: this idea of incarnation versus abstraction, you know, feminine vessel,
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: masculine fire, again, very broad archetypal terms. And the last
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: thing that I, again, I brushed against was this idea
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: of the six days of creation and that image of
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: the concentric days flowering into the Sabbath of gold. And
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: in that way, I think that the week becomes a
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: kind of revolving mandala and the seventh day is the
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: seventh petal and the seventh then becomes a signal of
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: psychic wholeness and there we have this labor versus repose
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: or being versus becoming so there's there's a cyclic tension
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: between those bits of it again i want to apologize
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: those of you for whom von bingen's work is like
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: your opus Write to us and let us know what
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: you think about those images, because I think there's much,
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: much more to say than I could so quickly.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: I think you did a fabulous job, and I'm just
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: going to leave it there.
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: Here's a question from Adrian. I'm going to be so
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: interested in this. The connection of mandalas to the four
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: square interests me. Years ago, I had a dream that
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: figured a four-corners mandala and I had no clue what
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: it meant, dismissed it. An extremely dangerous animal that could
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: kill my husband was fished from its center. And a
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: few weeks later, I made the first move to leave
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: my abusive marriage. Imagine my shock reading Jung's Kundalini lectures
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: years later, and he speaks word for word of four
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: square mandalas and the ineffable and dangerous god that comes
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: from their centers. I turned pure white reading this, that
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: Jung tapped into something so universal that it entered my
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: dreams before I even knew much about it. I would
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: love to hear more about the universality of the mandala,
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: what does the four corners mean, and why can we
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: never understand what can be found at its center even
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: when it emerges to mysteriously help us in dreams to
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: do scary things like leaving dangerous marriages. I'm struck again
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: with this comment on something we've noticed before. the way
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: that these images spontaneously appear in visions, active imaginations, and dreams,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: especially at a time of crisis. So here was someone
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: who was in a dangerous marriage, and she had this
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: really remarkable dream that stayed with her. And, you know,
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: she says, you know, Jung tapped into something so universal. Well,
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: it's there. It's in the collective unconscious. And yes, I mean,
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: I think that this image of something at its center
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: that is transpersonal, that is ineffable, that we cannot relate
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: to consciously. I mean, it is the deity, correct? I mean,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: that's what is at the center of these Tibetan mandalas
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: that we've been referencing. And the deity can be both beneficent,
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: but it can also be fierce and dangerous as the
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: gods are, in fact. And here it was coming to
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: you in a time of distress. Now, you're asking a
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: lot about the four corners, and there is this kind
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: of tension in many mandalas between the square and the circle.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: And there's this idea of the squaring of the circle.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: The square with its four equidistant sides does also connote wholeness,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: but there's a perfection to the circle. So in some sense,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: I think that the squared circle indicates a kind of
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: a process of development toward wholeness and perfection.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: Beautifully said. And just a toss a few things in
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: there there's three pieces to this is the containment and
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: that's the four cornered structure that kind of closed psychic
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: circuit around a marriage that has kind of grown dangerous
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: then there's the eruption and the dangerous creature that carries
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: this raw instinctive aggression that you needed but you couldn't
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: claim as your own quite yet And then there's this exteriorization,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: like once it's fished out, that force then migrates from
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: the dream symbol into a kind of waking resolve that
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: then gave you the gas for your engine to make
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: a big change. And Jung noticed that quaternity mandalas often
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: surface before a decisive rupture. that to shore us up,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: to make us a bit more muscular. So before a divorce,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: a resignation, a break with addiction, so that an image
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: kind of briefly aligns the kind of scattered energies that
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: we're feeling, like we're not sure, maybe yes, maybe no,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: I don't know. And then the center releases this stored
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: power that then can move into action. And the few
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: times that Jung cites his patients, they talked about this
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: experience of a kind of harmony that then settles in
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: after this very fierce kind of intervention. So the good
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: news is, thank goodness, and you've got some kind of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: guardian angel self that's looking out for you, and that's
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: good news for all of us. Thank you, Connie. for
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: sending us a little bit of a question here, and
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: we're happy to hear from our subscriber community, so thank
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: you so much. So Connie writes, Please address the circle
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: moving to square, that nature in mandalas. How can the
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: self be imaged during our lifespan in the circle or
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: the square? I'm 83. And my dreams have had increasing
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: quaternities in images and numbers in the last several years.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: You know, that's very moving, isn't it? That, Connie, that
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: you're kind of tracking this as you, I'm sure, consider mortality. So,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: you know, the interesting thing about the square is that
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: it is the shape that can contain the circle itself. perfectly,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: as it were, completely symmetrically. There's no other shape that
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: can do that in the same way. So, you know,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: there's a reason why the square is an image of wholeness,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: and especially that four is an image of wholeness. You know,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: this was one of the things that Jung remarked on,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: and we see this again and again. In fairy tales,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: there are often sort of three attempts to do something,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: and then the fourth time there's success. So there are
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: these sort of groupings of four, which show a kind
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: of progressive development toward wholeness. So there's the first time,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: the second time, the third time, and then the fourth time.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: So four is an important number, and it does indicate wholeness.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: And then I think that the circle in some way
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: is kind of the perfected square, as it were, Absolutely.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: So we might toss a few associations out. The circle
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: is spirit's native gesture. It's boundless, centripetal, it's timeless. And
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: Jung said it's the primary image of the psyche, that
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: just a plain old circle. The square, I think, has
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: something to do with earth logic and weight and incarnation,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: and it can signify body and matter and reality. And
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: in tatva work, which is a form of Hindu mysticism,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: the yellow square, which is called privithi, symbolizes earth particularly.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: So we have this wonderful dance that one becomes the other,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: one is in or around the other. So I think
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: that there's a couple of things we could imagine. One
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: is that as we're aging, There's a kind of life
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: review that we go through. And when I think about
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: the square, I think about how memory fans out in
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: the four cardinal directions, past, present, here, and beyond. And
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: there's a demand to orient to that. And certainly in
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: that last quarter of our life, that's moving around. And
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: then there's another concept, the memento finis. which is the
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: idea of the bodily limits. And that really sharpens as
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: we age. So there is a natural, powerful drive to
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: complete the square. And that really intensifies. So a rotating
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: circle can turn into a kind of steady chamber so
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: that the self and the ego can meet in this
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: very particular rotation. way so we could break this into
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: a few ideas and again this was not explicit in
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: your question but i feel like it's implied that when
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: we see the circle inside of the square we can
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: interpret that sometimes as spirit has agreed to inhabit matter
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: and that image is about staying attentive to bodily rhythms
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: and relationships in your daily rituals When the square is
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: inside the circle, we might interpret that as the earthly
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: tasks are nearly finished and that consciousness is widening to
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: a kind of transpersonal horizon. If we think of fours
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: and permutations of four, four, eight, sixteen, to me that's
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: a kind of iterative rhythmic deepening of the same theme
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: of stabilize, integrate, sanctify, structure, structure, structure. And then sometimes
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: the circle is rotating more and more slowly, or perhaps
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: even stopping. And often if we're gifted with that sense,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: the opus is near completion. And what was dynamic is
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: crystallizing into an enduring form, which may in some ways
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: represent what we will take with us in consciousness as
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: we leave the body. Jung didn't write extensively about this,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: but he did believe that consciousness survives in some mysterious form.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: So I think across the lifespan that the mandala moves
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: from a kind of roaming circle, as when we're young,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: to a kind of seated square. And we need that
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: because Wholeness needs to be imagined and then incarnated. And
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: so that process might be suggested in some of the
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: things that you're experiencing. And again, this is all highly speculative. Elizabeth,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: shout out to you. Thank you so much for this
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: next question. Elizabeth writes, I have seen mandalas in yoga
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: classes and feel pulled to them, enjoying the geometry and
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: the colors. I feel unsure how to work with them,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: and I would love to know more about how to
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: get started. Thank you.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: You know, Elizabeth, what I would say is just enjoy them.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: Follow the impulse. If you feel moved to draw one,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: then do. I think what's important here is that it
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: is a kind of spontaneous experience. that you might have,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: that it isn't a kind of scripted activity, but that
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: you're allowing something to happen in the unconscious. And therefore,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: I feel a little wary of saying, well, you know,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: why don't you get yourself a mandala coloring book and,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: you know, color one a day or something like that.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: I think it's important to kind of listen to the unconscious.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: The unconscious is inviting you to engage with them somehow,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: but it might be important to see what the unconscious
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: wants you to do.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: So that is a very Jungian perspective, and Jung was
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: much more interested in emergent phenomena, and he was more
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: interested in how the self, again, can create just what
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: we need for a moment in time, I do want
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: to lean into the fact that you're seeing these already
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: created mandalas as part of your yoga class. And that's
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: leaning a little more into the religious use of mandalas,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: which are often more prescribed. So there are two ways
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: that in a religious practice, mandalas are used. One is
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: for a contemplative focus, and that's often the yantra. And
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: so you might see, you may have seen these where
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: there's a series of triangles, innumerable triangles that are moving
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: in or moving out. And that is kind of a
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: way of training consciousness and concentration. So in that way
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: of kind of fixing on the mandala and allowing one's
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: perfection of concentration to work. And the Tibetans believe that
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: the yogini can find this absolute state where all opposites
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: are transcended through perfect concentration. Again, you'd need to go
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: to a tradition outside of Jung because he didn't use
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: them that way. The other way that mantras are used,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: which is particularly Tibetan, is that the inherited which has
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: been kind of bestowed through the tradition, that it's studied.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of learning and doctrine and things called
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: empowerments so that there's learning about it. And then as
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: an advanced technique, something similar to active imagination, where people
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: would imagine literally shrinking down and entering into the mandala
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: and having these encounters many of which have been prescribed
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: that you're going to turn right and then you'll see
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: this deity and maybe you'll say this mantra. So there's
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: a very specific imaginal encounter that can happen through the mandala.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: And I guess what I would just encourage you to
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: do if your yoga class or your yoga teacher is
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: highly knowledgeable about this, have a conversation. But again, Jung
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: undoubtedly studied those kinds of things and he knew about them.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: But he was more interested in this spontaneous use, either
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: through art or other ways.
• 1:12:14
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