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VISIONS: When the Mystery Breaks Through · 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.
0:43
Speaker 3: Visions have a peculiar and interesting place in Jungian thought.
0:51
Speaker 3: They're not dreams. They're not exactly like fantasies. They're not hallucinations. Visions,
1:00
Speaker 3: from Jung's perspective, represent an intense intervention from the unconscious
1:09
Speaker 3: that breaks through into our waking mind and forcing us
1:15
Speaker 3: to see and experience something extraordinary, which is not present
1:20
Speaker 3: in the physical environment. We're more familiar in the accounts
1:24
Speaker 3: of mystics than saints. having visions of angels or of
1:29
Speaker 3: God or of other religious figures, the devil visiting them
1:34
Speaker 3: and tempting them. Jung had visions, particularly at times of
1:40
Speaker 3: tremendous physical or psychological stress. So today we thought we
1:45
Speaker 3: would try to parse out the difference between these various
1:52
Speaker 3: kinds of supersensory phenomena. and see if we can wrap
1:58
Speaker 3: our head around a little bit. And today it's going
2:01
Speaker 3: to be Lisa and I because Deb is having a
2:03
Speaker 3: lovely vacation with her family.
2:05
Speaker 2: Visions. Yeah, I mean, we came up with this topic.
2:08
Speaker 2: We hadn't talked about it before and immediately said, well,
2:12
Speaker 2: what's the difference between a vision and a fantasy and
2:14
Speaker 2: a hallucination and a dream and active imagination? So we're
2:19
Speaker 2: not going to pretend that what we're about to say is,
2:23
Speaker 2: is going to be somehow the final word in any way.
2:26
Speaker 2: But we thought it would probably be a good idea
2:28
Speaker 2: to try to parse some of this before we really
2:32
Speaker 2: get into the topic, just so that we've defined our
2:35
Speaker 2: terms a bit. So Jung talked a lot about visions.
2:40
Speaker 2: He has a two-volume series called The Vision Seminars, which
2:44
Speaker 2: I'm sure we'll be getting into a little bit. As
2:48
Speaker 2: you mentioned, Joseph, he had some very important visions. We'll
2:51
Speaker 2: be talking about those. And he wrote about the visions
2:55
Speaker 2: of mystics throughout history. But what is the difference between, say,
3:01
Speaker 2: a vision and a fantasy? Jung also spoke a lot
3:05
Speaker 2: about fantasy. Fantasy material, though, I think is generally something
3:10
Speaker 2: that happens kind of spontaneously. It's what happens when you
3:14
Speaker 2: just let go of directed thinking. It's a somewhat passive
3:20
Speaker 2: process of psyche just kind of throwing up images and imaginations.
3:27
Speaker 2: And we've spoken about fantasies before on the podcast. They
3:31
Speaker 2: can be enormously helpful in allowing us to create an
3:35
Speaker 2: image of what we might want next in our life
3:39
Speaker 2: or to get a sense of where the energy is flowing.
3:42
Speaker 2: I think of fantasy material as not exactly ego-directed, but
3:47
Speaker 2: it is often especially if they're pleasant fantasies, and we
3:53
Speaker 2: can have negative fantasies too. But pleasant fantasies often occur
3:59
Speaker 2: like fairly organically. They just sort of grow like a
4:04
Speaker 2: vine if we're not engaged in some kind of directed thinking.
4:08
Speaker 2: So if you're on a train and you're simply staring
4:11
Speaker 2: out the window, you may begin to have a fantasy
4:16
Speaker 2: of a vacation that you'd like to take or how
4:19
Speaker 2: you hope that the conversation with your boss will go,
4:22
Speaker 2: or any number of other things.
4:24
Speaker 3: So it reminds me of that experience of talking to
4:27
Speaker 3: ourselves in the car.
4:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:30
Speaker 3: You stop at a light and you look over and
4:32
Speaker 3: you see somebody's like, and their arms are moving around,
4:35
Speaker 3: their faces all, you know, hot and bothered. And they're,
4:39
Speaker 3: I mean, they're not having a vision and they're not hallucinating.
4:43
Speaker 3: but they're having a fantasy of really getting into an
4:46
Speaker 3: argument with somebody or giving somebody a real piece of
4:48
Speaker 3: their mind. And they know that it's an internal experience,
4:52
Speaker 3: but it has enough energy that they're really enacting it.
4:57
Speaker 3: You know, they're alone in the car. It doesn't have
5:00
Speaker 3: to be that way, but that's a good example most
5:02
Speaker 3: of us could probably identify with. So it's a fantasy.
5:06
Speaker 3: You're in love with somebody and you're fantasizing about how
5:08
Speaker 3: you might propose marriage to them. That's a fantasy. It's
5:12
Speaker 3: a something that we're aware that we're pondering, but it
5:18
Speaker 3: is kind of a dance. It's a creative dance around
5:21
Speaker 3: any number of different possibilities.
5:24
Speaker 2: And I think that Jung would agree that some fantasies
5:27
Speaker 2: can be very positive and life-affirming and creative. And sometimes
5:33
Speaker 2: fantasies are not so healthy because we might have ruminative
5:38
Speaker 2: fantasies about things that we're worried are going to happen
5:42
Speaker 2: that create a lot of anxiety unnecessarily. We may use
5:46
Speaker 2: fantasy to escape, although I think a lot of times
5:50
Speaker 2: my experience is that people are worried that's what they're
5:53
Speaker 2: doing when in fact it may be a more creative
5:57
Speaker 2: process than they're letting themselves know. But it can happen.
6:01
Speaker 2: It certainly can happen that someone spends all day maybe
6:08
Speaker 2: having a kind of imaginary romance with someone on Facebook
6:12
Speaker 2: half a world away, and that they're really engrossed in
6:15
Speaker 2: a fantasy that has taken them out of life. So
6:20
Speaker 2: they can be neutral, I think, they can be positive,
6:24
Speaker 2: and they can also be negative.
6:26
Speaker 3: New Year's Day, every year, millions of fantasies are verbalized.
6:30
Speaker 3: Write down your goals for 2025. you know, I'm going
6:35
Speaker 3: to lose 40 pounds and I'm going to paint the
6:38
Speaker 3: house and I'm going to get a new job. Those
6:41
Speaker 3: are all fantasies. And then if you're in one of
6:44
Speaker 3: those workshops where they're really interested in goal setting, they'll
6:49
Speaker 3: really have you break down your fantasy into really granular ways. Well,
6:53
Speaker 3: exactly what color would the house be? Or what exactly
6:56
Speaker 3: would the job be? And each time we're invited to
7:02
Speaker 3: imagine something Morphally, more specifically, we're using that fantasy-making element
7:09
Speaker 3: of our unconscious. Fantasy is often linguistically associated with fantastical thinking,
7:17
Speaker 3: but of course, actually, it's not at all. You can
7:20
Speaker 3: fantasize about having a bunch of people over for dinner and,
7:23
Speaker 3: you know, what would I make for a dinner party?
7:26
Speaker 3: That's a fantasy. That's low stakes, but you're using that,
7:31
Speaker 3: that part of the psyche that laboratory in the psyche
7:35
Speaker 3: where you can kind of try some things toss things around.
7:39
Speaker 2: Yeah that's a great way to describe it and so
7:42
Speaker 2: you know maybe maybe to put a final point on
7:45
Speaker 2: it it's very close to imagination fantasy and imagination are
7:50
Speaker 2: kind of cousins and you know it's funny because the
7:53
Speaker 2: other day i found myself i have no intention of
7:55
Speaker 2: getting a dog that is not Even something that's on
7:58
Speaker 2: the table. You know what Freud says?
8:01
Speaker 3: The thing that you're declaring you're not doing, you're like
8:05
Speaker 3: inches away from doing.
8:07
Speaker 2: Except my husband would have a different story. This is not.
8:13
Speaker 2: But the other day I was taking a walk and
8:15
Speaker 2: I saw some dog and I just found myself having
8:18
Speaker 2: a fantasy. What kind of dog would I get if
8:20
Speaker 2: I were going to get a dog? Which, of course,
8:22
Speaker 2: is some part of me would like a dog, which
8:24
Speaker 2: I can say is true. But I still don't think
8:26
Speaker 2: it's going to happen, unfortunately. But you know, would I
8:28
Speaker 2: want a little dog? Would I want a medium dog?
8:30
Speaker 2: Would I want a purebred? Would I want a rescue?
8:32
Speaker 2: I was just allowing myself to fantasize about having different
8:37
Speaker 2: kinds of dogs. So that's a great little example. So
8:41
Speaker 2: now let's turn briefly to hallucination, which is another thing
8:44
Speaker 2: that a vision is not. Although I would say that
8:48
Speaker 2: of all the things on the list, I think that
8:50
Speaker 2: these are the These are the two things, a vision
8:53
Speaker 2: and a hallucination, that one might need to do a
8:56
Speaker 2: differential diagnosis on because I think they could appear very similarly.
9:02
Speaker 2: So we usually associate a hallucination with a break in reality.
9:06
Speaker 2: It's often associated, there can be audio hallucinations and there
9:10
Speaker 2: can be visual hallucinations. There can also be olfactory hallucinations,
9:14
Speaker 2: though those are less common.
9:15
Speaker 3: Any of the senses can be intruded upon.
9:19
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. And so we might hallucinate that.
9:22
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you, when I used to work in
9:25
Speaker 3: the psych hospital, I can hear rats running in the ceiling.
9:28
Speaker 3: I can hear their little claws and feet moving around
9:31
Speaker 3: in the ceiling. I know they're up there. I can
9:34
Speaker 3: hear my mother, who passed away, screaming in discomfort on
9:40
Speaker 3: the ceiling of this building.
9:41
Speaker 2: Hmm. Wow.
9:44
Speaker 3: Those are auditory hallucinations. I think visual hallucinations can look
9:51
Speaker 3: like anything under the sun, but something that I would
9:54
Speaker 3: frequently see in the hospital is people would often see
10:00
Speaker 3: insects crawling out of people's bodies, which was very frightening
10:04
Speaker 3: to them. And they would swear they're seeing it happen
10:08
Speaker 3: in the room. So it's a malfunction of either part
10:13
Speaker 3: of the neurology, the neurochemistry, any number of different things.
10:19
Speaker 2: It's not well understood, but usually there may be some
10:25
Speaker 2: insight that it's a hallucination, but mostly there's either no
10:28
Speaker 2: or poor insight. And what we mean by that is
10:32
Speaker 2: that the person sees insects crawling out of someone's body
10:35
Speaker 2: and has no insight that that is a hallucination. It
10:38
Speaker 2: doesn't say, it might be something I'm just seeing. but
10:43
Speaker 2: maybe not. I'm not really sure. Sometimes people have that
10:46
Speaker 2: degree of insight where this might just be a hallucination.
10:51
Speaker 2: A lot of times hallucinations are very compelling and the
10:55
Speaker 2: sufferer believes that, like you said, I know the rats
10:58
Speaker 2: are there. Again, usually associated with psychosis, which can come
11:01
Speaker 2: about because of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or there can
11:06
Speaker 2: be a drug-induced psychosis that can result in hallucinations. I
11:12
Speaker 2: would say, And I'll stand for correction if you'd like,
11:17
Speaker 2: but I would say that, you know, arguably hallucinations are
11:21
Speaker 2: always pathological. They're always kind of maladaptive, especially because it
11:25
Speaker 2: implies a break with reality. I mean, I don't know,
11:29
Speaker 2: perhaps if you're using psychedelic substances, maybe it's part of
11:33
Speaker 2: a larger experience, but in general, it's a troubling symptom.
11:38
Speaker 3: I think that for Jung, if we just say that
11:41
Speaker 3: Jung's perspective, I think there are many modern perspectives because
11:45
Speaker 3: we know much more about the brain than Jung knew.
11:48
Speaker 3: But for Jung, hallucinations were purely pathological and yet still interesting.
11:57
Speaker 2: Yes.
11:57
Speaker 3: Because it was when he was young and living and
12:01
Speaker 3: working in the Burgholzli mental institution, And from people who
12:08
Speaker 3: don't realize, the doctors lived in the hospital with the patients,
12:12
Speaker 3: had an awful lot of contact. He has the rather
12:15
Speaker 3: famous experience of standing next to a patient who's staring
12:20
Speaker 3: at the sun and is hallucinating various phenomena, which later
12:26
Speaker 3: on Jung was able to identify as a very ancient
12:32
Speaker 3: Egyptian mythology. that this guy was hallucinating and seeing in
12:36
Speaker 3: the sun. The difference, he would say, perhaps between a
12:39
Speaker 3: vision and a hallucination, is that when people are having
12:43
Speaker 3: a vision, they know it's a vision. And they're not
12:47
Speaker 3: mistaking it for a change in the physical environment. When
12:51
Speaker 3: someone is hallucinating, the ego has been compromised, much as
12:55
Speaker 3: it is in dreams, by the way. And they're believing
12:59
Speaker 3: things that simply shouldn't be believed as concrete physical reality.
13:06
Speaker 3: When I worked in the psych hospital and I was
13:10
Speaker 3: counseling somebody who was having a psychotic episode, I would
13:13
Speaker 3: try to convince them that something is happening that's strange
13:17
Speaker 3: where you are dreaming when you're awake. And just like
13:21
Speaker 3: when you're dreaming, there's things you'll believe that you wouldn't
13:23
Speaker 3: normally believe. Like a rhinoceros sits down and has breakfast
13:27
Speaker 3: with you and you think it's perfectly reasonable when you're dreaming. Well,
13:30
Speaker 3: if you're dreaming when you're awake, you might think something
13:32
Speaker 3: that extraordinary also seems perfectly reasonable. Rats in the ceiling,
13:37
Speaker 3: my mother on the roof, ants crawling out of my fingertips.
13:42
Speaker 3: But in the visionary state, the ego knows its boundaries.
13:47
Speaker 2: Yes, so the thing that all of these have in common, fantasies, hallucinations, visions, dreams,
13:56
Speaker 2: is that the material comes from the unconscious. So we're
13:59
Speaker 2: dealing with unconscious material and maybe the difference is the
14:03
Speaker 2: ego's relationship with it. So I want to bring in
14:07
Speaker 2: one final category before we really dig into the meat here,
14:11
Speaker 2: and that is active imagination, which was a technique that
14:14
Speaker 2: Jung experienced to essentially, I think, invite a visionary experience.
14:20
Speaker 2: It's a little different. It's not a spontaneous eruption of
14:23
Speaker 2: unconscious contents. And people who've had visions, and I've known
14:28
Speaker 2: some of them, it's universally overwhelming to experience a vision.
14:33
Speaker 2: It might be incredibly frightening. It might be amazingly wonderful,
14:38
Speaker 2: but it's overwhelming. An active imagination is usually not. You know,
14:44
Speaker 2: you quiet your mind, you set aside some time and
14:47
Speaker 2: space to drop into kind of a slightly um trance-like
14:52
Speaker 2: state and then you invite the unconscious to step forward
14:55
Speaker 2: but your your ego consciousness is still present so it
15:00
Speaker 2: is an amalgam of conscious and unconscious material and that
15:05
Speaker 2: is uh the the kind of material that is actually
15:08
Speaker 2: spoken about in the vision seminars and maybe we'll we'll
15:12
Speaker 2: get into that a little bit more in detail but
15:14
Speaker 2: one of jung's analysands christiana morgan had a real facility
15:19
Speaker 2: for active imagination and also drew her visions, her active imaginations.
15:25
Speaker 2: And this is what Jung interpreted in these seminars. And again,
15:30
Speaker 2: perhaps more on that later. But so let's talk about visions.
15:35
Speaker 2: Should we, I don't know, talk about some examples maybe?
15:38
Speaker 3: Well, I think that some of the things is visions
15:42
Speaker 3: happen when your eyes are open and you're wide awake.
15:46
Speaker 3: So you're standing there in your kitchen or you're driving
15:49
Speaker 3: down the street or you're out there in your backyard
15:52
Speaker 3: and you are in the world. And then suddenly you
15:58
Speaker 3: see something that is extraordinary and in many ways defies
16:05
Speaker 3: natural law in one way or another. And you're aware
16:11
Speaker 3: that something is being done. given to you from some
16:16
Speaker 3: other domain inside of ourselves. We're not confused that it's
16:23
Speaker 3: happening in the moment.
16:25
Speaker 2: You know, I wonder if it would be good just
16:27
Speaker 2: to talk about one of Jung's visions. I'm just going
16:31
Speaker 2: to read from his biography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Toward the
16:36
Speaker 2: autumn of 1913, The pressure which I had felt was
16:40
Speaker 2: in me seemed to be moving outward as though there
16:43
Speaker 2: were something in the air. The atmosphere actually seemed to
16:47
Speaker 2: me darker than it had been. It was as though
16:50
Speaker 2: the sense of oppression no longer sprang exclusively from a
16:53
Speaker 2: psychic situation but from concrete reality. The feeling grew more
16:58
Speaker 2: and more intense. In October, while I was alone on
17:02
Speaker 2: a journey, I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision.
17:08
Speaker 2: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and
17:11
Speaker 2: low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When
17:15
Speaker 2: it came up to Switzerland, I saw that the mountains
17:17
Speaker 2: grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realized
17:21
Speaker 2: that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the
17:25
Speaker 2: mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the
17:29
Speaker 2: drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned
17:35
Speaker 2: to blood. This vision lasted about one hour. I was
17:41
Speaker 2: perplexed and nauseated and ashamed of my weakness. Two weeks passed,
17:47
Speaker 2: then the vision recurred under the same conditions even more
17:50
Speaker 2: vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasized. An
17:55
Speaker 2: inner voice spoke, look at it well, it is wholly
17:57
Speaker 2: real and it will be so, you cannot doubt it. So,
18:02
Speaker 2: I mean, this sounds absolutely terrifying and This was 1913.
18:09
Speaker 2: Jung mentioned that he was worried, talk about hallucinations, he
18:15
Speaker 2: was worried that he was perhaps having a psychotic break.
18:19
Speaker 2: He did not know what to make of it. And
18:22
Speaker 2: so he says that later in 1914, when he was
18:25
Speaker 2: in Britain, and he heard that the First World War
18:28
Speaker 2: had broken out, he felt a sense of relief. Because
18:33
Speaker 2: he knew that the visions had been a prophetic vision
18:38
Speaker 2: and not signs of an impending personal psychosis. It's kind
18:41
Speaker 2: of a collective psychosis. So it's an extraordinary vision, certainly
18:49
Speaker 2: in a very kind of almost concrete way, you know,
18:52
Speaker 2: that the floodwaters wouldn't penetrate Switzerland, of course, because Switzerland
18:57
Speaker 2: was neutral. but that all of Europe would be awash
19:03
Speaker 2: in blood. I mean, it's really chilling. And of course,
19:08
Speaker 2: that happened. And there was a whole era that was
19:11
Speaker 2: wiped away. I mean, the end of the First World
19:14
Speaker 2: War really brought a close to many things. So that
19:19
Speaker 2: was a vision. It was a frightening vision. It was
19:21
Speaker 2: also a prophetic vision, which we haven't landed on that.
19:24
Speaker 2: But but I think that is a kind of subcategory
19:28
Speaker 2: of vision.
19:29
Speaker 3: And a vision that has to do with an entire culture.
19:34
Speaker 3: Jung noticed that some people seem to have an affinity
19:40
Speaker 3: for a deeper layer in the unconscious, that they are
19:45
Speaker 3: able to perceive patterns that are constellating drawing collective psychic
19:52
Speaker 3: factors together, and then are able to communicate that in
19:57
Speaker 3: these symbolic and sometimes rather literal images. But at the time,
20:03
Speaker 3: Jung did not necessarily know that this was a prophetic vision.
20:08
Speaker 3: He needed a certain amount of confirmation. Having had that confirmation,
20:12
Speaker 3: I think it gave him a great deal of confidence
20:14
Speaker 3: and his ability to trust that when he was perceiving
20:20
Speaker 3: these emergent cultural patterns, they really were saying something significant.
20:26
Speaker 3: So the difficulty, I think, for any of us is,
20:30
Speaker 3: if we have a vision, how do we know that
20:34
Speaker 3: we should take it seriously or not? What What should
20:37
Speaker 3: we do? If we're sitting there, you know, I'm sitting
20:41
Speaker 3: there in my kitchen making my famous New York cheesecake
20:44
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden my eyes fly open and
20:48
Speaker 3: I see great rivers of terrible things happening. And then
20:55
Speaker 3: I'm back there at the mixer and it's still going on.
20:59
Speaker 3: What do I do with that, you know?
21:02
Speaker 2: First of all, there is a cultural context, right? Because
21:04
Speaker 2: it used to be far more ordinary for people. Maybe
21:07
Speaker 2: not ordinary. Maybe that's the wrong word. But there was
21:10
Speaker 2: a kind of a cultural way of understanding visions. For example,
21:14
Speaker 2: in the Middle Ages, it was a kind of de
21:17
Speaker 2: rigueur if you were going to be a mystic to
21:19
Speaker 2: have visions. And, you know, the lives of the saints
21:24
Speaker 2: are filled with their visions. We have the written visions
21:29
Speaker 2: of people like Hildegard von Bingen. I think Joan of
21:35
Speaker 2: Arc spoke about her visions, and I think someone has
21:38
Speaker 2: recorded those.
21:40
Speaker 3: And then St. Paul, Saul being on the road to
21:43
Speaker 3: Damascus and getting struck by a vision of Christ, and
21:46
Speaker 3: then he allegedly transformed into a different person. St.
21:52
Speaker 2: Teresa of Avila had these kind of ecstatic visions. So
21:59
Speaker 2: once upon a time... If you had a vision, it
22:02
Speaker 2: was maybe a sign that you had been chosen by God,
22:07
Speaker 2: that you had a kind of special relationship with God.
22:12
Speaker 2: And of course, you know, I hear that Jung vision
22:15
Speaker 2: from 1913, and I think, well, he had a special
22:19
Speaker 2: relationship with the collective unconscious, which is maybe a psychological
22:23
Speaker 2: language for saying the same thing. I mean, that doesn't
22:28
Speaker 2: happen to me, you know? I think not many of
22:31
Speaker 2: us have those spontaneous visions as powerful as the one
22:35
Speaker 2: Jung describes. So, you know, it could be that it's
22:39
Speaker 2: a sort of stable phenomenon for a certain type of person.
22:43
Speaker 2: In the high Middle Ages, having visions, especially if they
22:49
Speaker 2: were kind of ratified by the church, gave you enormous
22:53
Speaker 2: status and importance. And of course, that wouldn't be true now.
22:58
Speaker 2: If you went around talking about your visions, you might
23:00
Speaker 2: wind up in the psych ward, possibly, or something.
23:04
Speaker 3: Well, again, I think the difference is whether or not
23:06
Speaker 3: we know that the vision is a vision or whether
23:10
Speaker 3: we believe it's actually a physical event. It's a different
23:13
Speaker 3: thing for me to call up the cops and say, hey,
23:16
Speaker 3: there's a river of blood that's just crossing my front
23:19
Speaker 3: lawn right now. We all need help here. Nobody else
23:24
Speaker 3: can see it. for Jung to then see that and know,
23:28
Speaker 3: that was a vision.
23:29
Speaker 2: But I think what I'm saying is that our culture
23:31
Speaker 2: relates to it differently. So if I were to say,
23:35
Speaker 2: you know, have friends over for dinner and say, you know,
23:37
Speaker 2: this strange thing happened to me. I just saw, I
23:39
Speaker 2: was sitting in the reading a book and I, all
23:42
Speaker 2: of a sudden, you know, it just, I saw the
23:45
Speaker 2: world in a sea of blood. You know, my friends
23:47
Speaker 2: might be like, Okay, Lisa, maybe you want to cut
23:50
Speaker 2: back on the schnapps or something. I just think that culturally,
23:57
Speaker 2: it used to bring status to be a visionary. Now,
24:03
Speaker 2: even if you know it was a vision, you might
24:06
Speaker 2: get looked at askance by other people. We don't accord
24:11
Speaker 2: the same status to visions. We mistrust them, I think.
24:16
Speaker 2: So that means that if you are a person who's
24:18
Speaker 2: had a vision, and like I said, that still happens,
24:21
Speaker 2: unless you find the right way to share that, you
24:25
Speaker 2: can be very alone with it. It can be very,
24:29
Speaker 2: very lonely to have a visionary experience. Unless you have
24:34
Speaker 2: a community that, or a person at least, that you
24:36
Speaker 2: can take it to and say, this happened. Most of
24:39
Speaker 2: the time, these are life-changing. They shake us to our foundation,
24:44
Speaker 2: or at least.
24:47
Speaker 2: They rattle us. And so there is a need for
24:50
Speaker 2: a kind of integration. And it's very difficult to find
24:54
Speaker 2: that opportunity for integration if no one around us is
24:57
Speaker 2: going to believe us or if they're going to misinterpret
25:00
Speaker 2: what we're saying or, you know, and see it maybe
25:03
Speaker 2: as a sign of pathology or to devalue it. So
25:08
Speaker 2: it can be hard to be a modern day visionary.
25:11
Speaker 3: Well, I think that the Jung's perspective, as I understand it,
25:15
Speaker 3: is that the vision is, first interpreted subjectively, that the
25:20
Speaker 3: vision has something to do with me and something that
25:25
Speaker 3: is forcing its way into my awareness. So I'll quote
25:31
Speaker 3: a little something from Jung. And he says, similarly, we
25:39
Speaker 3: see in early Christianity how the bishops zealously strove to
25:43
Speaker 3: stamp out the activity of the individual unconscious among the monks.
25:48
Speaker 3: The Archbishop Anathasius of Alexandria, in his biography of St. Anthony,
25:55
Speaker 3: gives us particularly valuable insights in this respect. By way
25:59
Speaker 3: of instruction to his monks, he describes the apparitions and visions,
26:05
Speaker 3: the perils of the soul, which befall those that pray
26:09
Speaker 3: and fast in solitude. He warns him how cleverly the
26:13
Speaker 3: devil disguises himself in order to bring saintly men to
26:17
Speaker 3: their downfall. The devil is, of course, the voice of
26:22
Speaker 3: the anchorite's own unconscious in revolt against the forcible suppression
26:31
Speaker 3: of his nature. And so, sometimes we have aligned ourselves
26:37
Speaker 3: with the dramatic repression or suppression of some aspect of
26:42
Speaker 3: our personality And if that is massively effective, it is
26:49
Speaker 3: possible that we will then have these visionary intrusions into
26:54
Speaker 3: our waking environment, which really is a personal correction that
27:01
Speaker 3: we are being forced to meet our unconscious contact in
27:06
Speaker 3: an eye-opened environment. So I'll give you a little just
27:12
Speaker 3: a few sentences of how this is described. This is
27:15
Speaker 3: written from this old manuscript. There is a time when
27:19
Speaker 3: we see no man, and yet the sound of the
27:22
Speaker 3: working of the devils is heard by us, and it
27:25
Speaker 3: is like the singing of a song in a loud voice.
27:28
Speaker 3: And there are at times when the words of Scripture
27:32
Speaker 3: are heard by us, just as if a living man
27:34
Speaker 3: was repeating them, and they are exactly like the words
27:38
Speaker 3: which we should hear if a man were reading from
27:41
Speaker 3: the book. And it also happens that they, the devils,
27:45
Speaker 3: rouse us up at night and incite us to stand up,
27:51
Speaker 3: and they make apparent unto us also the similitudes of
27:54
Speaker 3: monks and forms of those who mourn, and they draw
27:58
Speaker 3: nigh unto us as if they've come from a long
28:00
Speaker 3: way off, and they utter words, etc., etc. So these
28:04
Speaker 3: are waking... visions that he's describing and goes on and on.
28:12
Speaker 3: And as Jung was saying in his very calm, rather
28:16
Speaker 3: cool way, this is nothing more than the voice of
28:19
Speaker 3: this person's own unconscious, which is just sick and tired
28:24
Speaker 3: of being vilified and pushed aside. Jung's visions were rather
28:30
Speaker 3: extraordinary because it seems that they were less for him
28:34
Speaker 3: personally and more for the culture in a larger context.
28:39
Speaker 3: And I think that is a more remarkable capacity in
28:44
Speaker 3: terms of our visions.
28:45
Speaker 2: But I would say you're absolutely right about that. And
28:48
Speaker 2: it's a great distinction, right? The vision that comes to
28:51
Speaker 2: us to kind of do some compensatory work, just like
28:55
Speaker 2: a dream might, versus the vision that comes from maybe
28:59
Speaker 2: a deeper layer, comes from the collective unconscious or perhaps
29:02
Speaker 2: from the self, and is really meant for the collective.
29:05
Speaker 2: like Jung's 1913 visions of the River of Blood. But
29:10
Speaker 2: I'll say that, you know, throughout history, a lot of visionaries,
29:13
Speaker 2: a lot of mystics probably had those latter kind of visions.
29:19
Speaker 2: So the, you know, Joan of Arc, for example, had
29:23
Speaker 2: this vision that, you know, now we wonder if it was,
29:26
Speaker 2: what gave rise to that was some mildewed grain. But
29:34
Speaker 2: we don't know. but her vision certainly spoke to the collective,
29:38
Speaker 2: allowed her to speak to the collective addressed a collective
29:41
Speaker 2: need such that it became kind of actionable in the world.
29:46
Speaker 3: So Jung finishes up saying, after a page of quoting
29:52
Speaker 3: these visionary experiences, these quotations show how with the help
29:58
Speaker 3: of the general belief, The unconscious of the individual was rejected,
30:03
Speaker 3: despite the fact that it transparently spoke the truth. There are,
30:08
Speaker 3: in the history of the mind, special reasons for this rejection,
30:13
Speaker 3: but it is not incumbent on us to discuss them here.
30:16
Speaker 3: We must be content with the fact that the unconscious
30:20
Speaker 3: was suppressed. Psychologically, the suppression consists in the withdrawal of
30:28
Speaker 3: the libido. And then he goes on to let us
30:32
Speaker 3: know that as all of this energy is pushed down
30:36
Speaker 3: and pushed down and pushed down into the unconscious, it
30:39
Speaker 3: begins to churn upon itself. It begins to promote a
30:45
Speaker 3: kind of unconscious growth. And then it intrudes in the
30:51
Speaker 3: state of visions, forcing the ego to accept another symbolic layer,
31:01
Speaker 3: which Jung thought of as a corrective, that these devilish
31:07
Speaker 3: predispositions in the saints needed to have a relationship with
31:14
Speaker 3: the conscious mind. And even if that was in what
31:17
Speaker 3: we might say is the theater of visions, they were
31:22
Speaker 3: forced to interact with these qualities, feel tempted by them,
31:26
Speaker 3: feel frightened by them, be in conversation with them. but
31:30
Speaker 3: the unconscious was not going to let them imprison it indefinitely.
31:38
Speaker 2: So we could say really that those visions were kind
31:41
Speaker 2: of an example of a symptom. And these days, someone
31:46
Speaker 2: who really represses an aspect of their unconscious might not
31:50
Speaker 2: see a vision. They might fall ill or have a
31:56
Speaker 2: kind of a somatic, they might, developed stomach pain or
32:01
Speaker 2: something like that. You know? Um, I think that that
32:05
Speaker 2: type of vision that you was talking about there is
32:08
Speaker 2: a little different than obviously the prophetic vision that he had,
32:12
Speaker 2: but I think it's different again from this kind of, um,
32:16
Speaker 2: spontaneous eruption of, of kind of a, I want to
32:21
Speaker 2: say kind of a communication from the self, you know,
32:24
Speaker 2: that's almost like this shadow became personified and experienced as
32:30
Speaker 2: external to the person, which definitely counts as a vision,
32:34
Speaker 2: I think, according to our nomenclature here that we've outlined today.
32:40
Speaker 2: But maybe there's this other thing too.
32:43
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely.
32:45
Speaker 2: I want to slip over to that for a second
32:46
Speaker 2: and just say, what you were reading reminded me that
32:52
Speaker 2: especially during the Middle Ages and other times and places,
32:56
Speaker 2: people have cultivated visions. So one of the things that
33:00
Speaker 2: people might do is fast. And part of what fasting
33:05
Speaker 2: does is it can put you into a slightly altered
33:08
Speaker 2: state of consciousness where you might have access to visions.
33:14
Speaker 2: And this is something, this is fasting and other similar
33:18
Speaker 2: practices that were meant to engender visions or a kind
33:21
Speaker 2: of psychotechnology that humanity has developed again and again and again.
33:27
Speaker 2: So there's something really important about it. It's almost like,
33:31
Speaker 2: you know, talked about this in the episode a few
33:34
Speaker 2: weeks ago with Gary Clark, you know, it's our, our,
33:39
Speaker 2: our cortex, uh, needs to be kind of turned the
33:42
Speaker 2: volume on. It needs to be turned down sometimes so
33:45
Speaker 2: that we can hear more from the archetypal brain. And
33:48
Speaker 2: so we develop ways of doing that. And obviously there's
33:51
Speaker 2: shamanic traditions where people do that. That is in some sense,
33:55
Speaker 2: what's going on, I think with use of psychedelic substances and, um,
34:00
Speaker 2: and of course then there's active imagination before, and we
34:04
Speaker 2: can talk more about active imagination in a minute. I
34:06
Speaker 2: just want to share, um, Just another one of Jung's
34:11
Speaker 2: visions that's quite different than the 1913 vision. So he says,
34:18
Speaker 2: in 1939, I gave a seminar on the spiritual exercises
34:22
Speaker 2: of Ignatius Loyola. At the same time, I was occupied
34:26
Speaker 2: on the studies for psychology and alchemy. First of all,
34:29
Speaker 2: can you imagine writing psychology and alchemy and then also
34:32
Speaker 2: preparing a lecture on.
34:34
Speaker 3: When did this guy have time to eat? Oh my God.
34:36
Speaker 3: I know, it's amazing.
34:37
Speaker 2: Like my brain. One night I awoke and saw bathed
34:41
Speaker 2: in bright light at the foot of my bed the
34:42
Speaker 2: figure of Christ on the cross. It was not quite
34:45
Speaker 2: life-size but extremely distinct. I saw that his body was
34:49
Speaker 2: made of greenish gold. The vision was marvelously beautiful and
34:53
Speaker 2: yet I was profoundly shaken by it. A vision as
34:56
Speaker 2: such is nothing unusual for me for I frequently see
35:00
Speaker 2: extremely vivid hypnagogic images. So this was something different. This
35:09
Speaker 2: was some kind of communication. And to our point before
35:13
Speaker 2: about when is it a kind of a personal correction
35:17
Speaker 2: and when is it more meant for the collective? I
35:21
Speaker 2: think if I recall that this became a really important...
35:26
Speaker 2: This informed the way he thought about alchemy, this vision.
35:31
Speaker 2: So in some sense, it was maybe... that communication from
35:36
Speaker 2: the collective psyche sort of saying, hey, you need to
35:40
Speaker 2: look here. You need to do this. This is the
35:42
Speaker 2: thing that needs to come out and into the world
35:44
Speaker 2: through you.
35:44
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's quite so, that the unconscious has
35:50
Speaker 3: different agendas relative to the individual. So some visions are
35:55
Speaker 3: just compensations in the psyche, and not unlike dreams, except
36:00
Speaker 3: we happen to be in a waking state, repressed energies
36:03
Speaker 3: and tensions. manifest as these external visions and they're providing
36:10
Speaker 3: in a sense an answer or a correction to the
36:13
Speaker 3: conscious attitude which has gone so so far in one
36:16
Speaker 3: direction that the unconscious is going to break through even
36:19
Speaker 3: when you're awake they're all demonstrations of the autonomy of
36:23
Speaker 3: the unconscious that there is another that is generating images
36:29
Speaker 3: it knows things that is different from the waking personality,
36:36
Speaker 3: and that the visions are giving us absolute proof of that.
36:39
Speaker 3: Now we may ascribe them to supernatural causes, but the
36:44
Speaker 3: powers of the unconscious have been named in supernatural ways
36:48
Speaker 3: and imagined in supernatural ways since the beginning of time.
36:53
Speaker 3: What we were talking about in these religious experiences are
36:57
Speaker 3: archetypal material. When an archetype activates, and then it bursts
37:03
Speaker 3: through into the waking personality. Then we have Hildegard von
37:09
Speaker 3: Bingen seeing fireballs moving around, and St. Anthony seeing devils,
37:14
Speaker 3: and Saul on the road to Damascus being struck by
37:19
Speaker 3: blazing light, the Holy Ghost, the coniuntio, Christ at the
37:26
Speaker 3: foot of Jung's bed. When the archetypes activate, then it
37:31
Speaker 3: can seem like a visitation from God or from the gods. Yeah.
37:36
Speaker 2: And, you know, the examples that we've been given, I
37:39
Speaker 2: just want to say, are all within the kind of
37:42
Speaker 2: Christian tradition, because I think we're just that we just
37:45
Speaker 2: have that at hand a little easier. But every faith
37:50
Speaker 2: has this experience of people who have mystical visions. I
37:55
Speaker 2: think that is a universal human phenomenon. And it's often
38:01
Speaker 2: very important in the establishment of faith traditions, right? People
38:07
Speaker 2: who see visions are often those who become prophets who
38:12
Speaker 2: can establish a new cultural attitude. So that's one way, again,
38:19
Speaker 2: to imagine this. And we're sort of talking about this
38:21
Speaker 2: range of experiences that the way the unconscious speaks is
38:26
Speaker 2: something comes forward. from the collective psyche, the objective psyche,
38:31
Speaker 2: through an individual who may have this extraordinarily ready access,
38:37
Speaker 2: like Hildegard von Bingen, who apparently started having visions, I think,
38:41
Speaker 2: when she was three. And here's Jung saying like, oh yeah,
38:44
Speaker 2: that happens to.
38:44
Speaker 3: Me all the time.
38:45
Speaker 2: It's just another Tuesday.
38:48
Speaker 3: Oh, that old thing.
38:51
Speaker 2: You know, that, that people that have, for whatever reason, just, uh,
38:56
Speaker 2: you know, constitutionally, they have easier access to this, that
38:59
Speaker 2: they are often the ones who bring forward something. And,
39:05
Speaker 2: and then it gets kind of gifted to the world
39:09
Speaker 2: and births new, uh, lines of inquiry or new ways
39:13
Speaker 2: of understanding our relationship with divine or new schools of
39:18
Speaker 2: psychology or, uh, Hundreds of other things. So visions can
39:25
Speaker 2: be the way that the archetypal world gets... gifted to
39:32
Speaker 2: humanity through the visions of an individual.
39:35
Speaker 3: I think those are the visions or the records of
39:39
Speaker 3: visions that often survive is because they have an archetypal
39:42
Speaker 3: dimension to them. A vision that is particularly important relevant
39:49
Speaker 3: to a moment in a person's life or a moment
39:53
Speaker 3: in the cultural zeitgeist, might be recorded but may fall
39:59
Speaker 3: out of history, fall out of interest. But visions have
40:03
Speaker 3: an archetypal resonance, remain interesting eon after eon because the
40:10
Speaker 3: archetypes remain intact regardless of the change of outer circumstance.
40:18
Speaker 3: And that's why many of these religious visions and religious
40:21
Speaker 3: experiences in the major world religions continue to bring people
40:28
Speaker 3: into the religions, make scholars want to talk about these things,
40:33
Speaker 3: because there is something eternal that is present in all
40:40
Speaker 3: of these things.
40:41
Speaker 2: So I thought I'd share an example of a relatively
40:45
Speaker 2: modern-day visionary. What year was this? It was in the
40:49
Speaker 2: 20th century. There was a Benedictine monk named Bede Griffiths.
40:55
Speaker 2: He died in 1993. He was a close friend of C.S.
40:59
Speaker 3: Lewis.
40:59
Speaker 2: He was from the UK. And in the 1950s, he
41:03
Speaker 2: went to India and he became very knowledgeable about Hinduism.
41:10
Speaker 2: And he created a Catholic ashram in India. So I'm
41:16
Speaker 2: looking at, I'm reading from a biography of Griffith's. It's
41:19
Speaker 2: called Beyond the Darkness. And toward the end of his life,
41:25
Speaker 2: he had this experience. I had some breakfast and then
41:29
Speaker 2: I felt sort of restless, disturbed, not knowing quite what
41:32
Speaker 2: was happening. The inspiration came suddenly again to surrender to
41:37
Speaker 2: the mother. It was quite unexpected. Surrender to the mother.
41:42
Speaker 2: And so I somehow made a surrender to the mother.
41:46
Speaker 2: Then I had an experience of overwhelming love. Waves of
41:51
Speaker 2: love sort of flowed into me. Judy, my great friend,
41:55
Speaker 2: was watching. Friends were beside me all the time. I
41:59
Speaker 2: called out to her, I'm being overwhelmed by love. And
42:04
Speaker 2: it was this extraordinary experience. He said, death. the mother,
42:09
Speaker 2: the void, all was love. It was an overwhelming love,
42:13
Speaker 2: so strong that I could not contain myself. I did
42:16
Speaker 2: not know whether I would survive. I knew I had
42:19
Speaker 2: to die, but whether it would be in this world
42:22
Speaker 2: or another, I did not know. At first, I thought
42:24
Speaker 2: I would die and just be engulfed in this love.
42:27
Speaker 2: It was the unconditional love of which I had often spoken,
42:31
Speaker 2: utterly mysterious beyond words. So what was undoubtedly happening was
42:37
Speaker 2: that he was having a left hemisphere stroke. And his
42:42
Speaker 2: description of ecstasy is not that different than that experienced
42:47
Speaker 2: by the neuroscientist Jill Bolte-Taylor, who also had a left
42:50
Speaker 2: hemisphere stroke and then wrote a book about it called
42:52
Speaker 2: My Stroke of Insight. And if you watch her TED Talk,
42:57
Speaker 2: it's really remarkable because it changed her. It really changed her,
43:03
Speaker 2: this experience. So he said, On the physical level, it
43:07
Speaker 2: was apparently a stroke, a bursting of a blood vessel
43:09
Speaker 2: due to lack of oxygen in the brain. On the
43:12
Speaker 2: psychological level, it was a death of the mind, a
43:15
Speaker 2: breakdown of the left brain rational mind, and an awakening
43:19
Speaker 2: to the feminine intuitive mind. But on the spiritual level,
43:23
Speaker 2: it certainly left an impression of Advaita, a transcendence of
43:28
Speaker 2: all limitation, an awakening to the non-dual reality. This has
43:33
Speaker 2: left an indelible impression on me. I am seeing everything
43:37
Speaker 2: in a new light. And then he went on to
43:40
Speaker 2: have this sort of extraordinary period of productivity after this. But,
43:44
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. Do you think that a
43:48
Speaker 2: stroke is the same thing as a vision? Or I'm
43:53
Speaker 2: inclined to think that it is.
43:55
Speaker 3: If that were my analysis, I would be interested in
44:00
Speaker 3: the effect that the vision had, much like a big dream.
44:05
Speaker 3: that if this vision of universal love actually changed his
44:11
Speaker 3: personality secondary to the medical crises, and that it remained
44:16
Speaker 3: a rich source of material for him, then I might
44:20
Speaker 3: see it as highly useful. If it disappears, if it
44:24
Speaker 3: seems meaningless when he comes back to a kind of
44:28
Speaker 3: normal functioning, I don't know if I would make much
44:30
Speaker 3: of it. But I think it has a lot to
44:32
Speaker 3: do with how it's affecting the individual to see whether
44:37
Speaker 3: or not it's medicine for them, medicine for the world,
44:40
Speaker 3: or really just like a hiccup in the machine.
44:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, and I know this is
44:46
Speaker 2: a controversial thing to say, and we've covered in other podcasts,
44:49
Speaker 2: but a lot of times people obviously these days induce
44:51
Speaker 2: visions with psychedelic medications. And part of my, I would say,
44:56
Speaker 2: curiosity is that while some people have big experiences that
45:01
Speaker 2: change them that remain a kind of focal point in
45:05
Speaker 2: later life. You know, this is this experience that I
45:08
Speaker 2: had that changed me, that altered the way that I
45:12
Speaker 2: relate to the rest of myself in the world. For
45:15
Speaker 2: many people, it's sort of a big experience that pretty
45:20
Speaker 2: quickly evaporates. In my experience, having worked with people who
45:26
Speaker 2: use psilocybin, it doesn't it doesn't always tend to create
45:33
Speaker 2: big shifts. I know sometimes it does. But so that's
45:37
Speaker 2: an interesting way of kind of putting it. It's like,
45:39
Speaker 2: what is the effect? Is it a hiccup? But I mean,
45:43
Speaker 2: I guess a vision, could a vision, could any vision
45:46
Speaker 2: be a hiccup or just part of our range of
45:49
Speaker 2: different experiences? Like Jung's talking about, yeah, I just see
45:52
Speaker 2: these hypnagogic things. No big deal.
45:56
Speaker 3: Well, I think as Jung was saying when he was
45:58
Speaker 3: talking about this archbishop having visions of devils, that for him,
46:04
Speaker 3: it really was about personal suppressed material. And Jung was
46:09
Speaker 3: not particularly impressed or surprised by it, for it to
46:12
Speaker 3: show up in this kind of ancient text, that we're
46:16
Speaker 3: still human beings, and we're kind of structured the same
46:19
Speaker 3: way from antiquity to now. So sometimes a visionary experience,
46:25
Speaker 3: even though it may seem extraordinary, because we don't generally
46:29
Speaker 3: see manifest objects just moving around. But sometimes the reason
46:35
Speaker 3: for them could be uniquely personal. And if that personal
46:40
Speaker 3: dynamic is resolved, the personal problem is resolved, the vision
46:45
Speaker 3: is kind of resolved. I would like to talk about
46:49
Speaker 3: something that I think is relevant in current environment is UFOs.
46:56
Speaker 3: That UFOs, for Jung, really were visions, and that he
47:03
Speaker 3: thought of them as archetypally inspired in the same way
47:06
Speaker 3: that in medieval times we might see visions of angels,
47:11
Speaker 3: physical angels somehow descending to the earth and seeing them
47:17
Speaker 3: in a waking state. And there are people who in
47:19
Speaker 3: waking states see these objects, these UFOs. He took a
47:26
Speaker 3: further step, which I think is really fun and even
47:29
Speaker 3: more radical, because some of these UFOs have been filmed,
47:35
Speaker 3: and the military has recently released some of them, is
47:41
Speaker 3: that Psyche can create temporary physical objects. It's a pretty
47:51
Speaker 3: trippy thing to consider. So what he was mulling around
47:57
Speaker 3: when he was working on synchronicity with Wolfgang Pauli is
48:00
Speaker 3: that In the beginning, there was matter and energy, but
48:05
Speaker 3: maybe there was also psyche, that all three were present
48:10
Speaker 3: right from the beginning, and that psyche is a universal principle.
48:15
Speaker 3: Of course, all the mystics, particularly Eastern mystics, have said
48:19
Speaker 3: this in many, many different ways, but that the collective
48:23
Speaker 3: psyche of humanity could focus or need energy in such
48:29
Speaker 3: a way that a temporary object could be constructed like
48:36
Speaker 3: a sphere of light that darts and moves and can
48:39
Speaker 3: be filmed. Now, he didn't have any way of proving that.
48:44
Speaker 3: It was a way that he was trying to conceptually
48:48
Speaker 3: consider that and have it fit in the frame with
48:52
Speaker 3: which he was trying to understand the universe, inner and outer. But,
48:57
Speaker 3: secondary to that, There is a big, big, big surge
49:02
Speaker 3: in reports of UFOs, people seeking out UFOs, expecting UFOs,
49:08
Speaker 3: and expecting these intelligences from on high to descend down.
49:17
Speaker 3: We also, as Jungians, think that this kind of phenomena
49:23
Speaker 3: occurs when a culture is in crisis, that the self
49:28
Speaker 3: and the unconscious activates much more dynamically because there is
49:33
Speaker 3: a need to try to keep things balanced. trying to
49:39
Speaker 3: keep life on track, particularly when we're being thrust into
49:43
Speaker 3: extremes that can be dangerous.
49:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just thinking about, again, how varied the phenomenon
49:51
Speaker 2: of visions is, right? We've talked about all these different categories,
49:54
Speaker 2: and I think you're leaning into another one now, which
49:58
Speaker 2: is a collective vision, which is like a very interesting
50:09
Speaker 2: that's maybe more like a kind of psychic epidemic, right?
50:17
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of the thing that happened recently where all
50:20
Speaker 2: the drones in New Jersey, these mysterious drones, which, you know,
50:24
Speaker 2: everyone talked about it for weeks. I don't know if
50:27
Speaker 2: you heard about it down there, but of course I'm
50:29
Speaker 2: not far from New Jersey. So all of these stories
50:33
Speaker 2: about mysterious drones just behaving very unusually, and there were
50:38
Speaker 2: going to be briefings from the White House, and it
50:42
Speaker 2: was such a big deal. And it's kind of gone away.
50:46
Speaker 2: And I think the last thing I read about it,
50:49
Speaker 2: it was sort of like this phenomenon where there was
50:53
Speaker 2: a bit of a kind of... I'm trying to talk
50:57
Speaker 2: about it without being... without you choosing words that are
51:04
Speaker 2: laden with judgment, because I don't feel that way about it.
51:08
Speaker 2: I think it's a very human thing that we can
51:12
Speaker 2: latch onto things and project our fears maybe onto something
51:18
Speaker 2: and that this can happen at the level of the collective.
51:21
Speaker 2: It can, it can happen. It's, it's an aspect of
51:24
Speaker 2: mass psychology and it can be dangerous, but, but it's
51:29
Speaker 2: actually pretty normal and it's, Fascinating to me. So it
51:33
Speaker 2: seems like that may have been what all those drones
51:37
Speaker 2: in New Jersey were, which is just lots of people
51:40
Speaker 2: at the same time, seeing something, seeing things, and maybe
51:46
Speaker 2: seeing some things that were there, maybe misinterpreting some things
51:49
Speaker 2: that were there, and maybe sometimes having visions that were
51:55
Speaker 2: interpreted a certain way. And, you know, as per your
51:58
Speaker 2: point about the demons, It would be an expression of
52:03
Speaker 2: some material that hasn't had another way to make it
52:06
Speaker 2: to consciousness. It would be perhaps compensatory. And it would
52:13
Speaker 2: play a particular function.
52:15
Speaker 3: Jung talks about this when he's in his writings on hysteria.
52:20
Speaker 3: Hysteria is a particular vulnerability to splitting off parts of
52:26
Speaker 3: the psyche and a vulnerability... to then seeing them as
52:31
Speaker 3: inner or outer objects. So, you know, the witch accusations
52:36
Speaker 3: in Salem, Jung would have thought of as a kind
52:39
Speaker 3: of mass hysteria. And so I think particularly when it's
52:46
Speaker 3: driven by panic and fear, which is what you were
52:49
Speaker 3: leaning into, I don't know that Jung would think of
52:52
Speaker 3: it as hysteria if people all thought it was a
52:54
Speaker 3: rather delightful experience. or that it was somehow egocentronic or
52:59
Speaker 3: enhancing in some way, but particularly when it's paranoid.
53:04
Speaker 2: Well, you used the word I was trying to avoid. Hysteria? Hysteria.
53:10
Speaker 2: Because I think it's appropriate, but it is a freighted
53:14
Speaker 2: word that sounds very derogatory. But it is just describing
53:18
Speaker 2: the phenomenon that you just verbalized so well. And so,
53:22
Speaker 2: you know, again, bringing it back to our topic, If
53:26
Speaker 2: you think that you see a witch around the corner
53:28
Speaker 2: of your building, is that a vision? I don't know.
53:33
Speaker 3: Well, again, it depends on whether or not it is
53:38
Speaker 3: a concrete sensory experience in the space. And again, there
53:44
Speaker 3: are no other signs of florid illness of some kind.
53:51
Speaker 3: My father, when he was in the hospital, would get sundowners.
53:55
Speaker 3: Some would go down, and he was very, very vulnerable,
53:58
Speaker 3: and he would start hallucinating. All kinds of delusional beliefs
54:02
Speaker 3: would come in. And they were very determined, you know.
54:05
Speaker 3: I was standing next to him, and he was taking me.
54:08
Speaker 3: I was like, Joey, Joey, there's an enormous machine on
54:12
Speaker 3: the other side over there, and it's doing terrible things.
54:16
Speaker 3: I would just pull back the curtain, and then I'd
54:19
Speaker 3: look at him, and he would go, they moved it.
54:23
Speaker 3: It was just going to be the truth. That was it.
54:30
Speaker 3: So there are illnesses, psychological, physical, that can distort our sensorum.
54:40
Speaker 3: Jung would still say, I think, that my father's certainty
54:45
Speaker 3: or even glimpses of the vast machine that is dangerous
54:50
Speaker 3: to him on the other side still is valuable information
54:55
Speaker 3: about the unconscious. And what I would venture to say
54:58
Speaker 3: now in retrospect is that he hadn't started dialysis yet,
55:05
Speaker 3: but he needed to. And his life was going to
55:07
Speaker 3: be tied to a machine. That was going to companion
55:12
Speaker 3: him for the rest of his life. It was going
55:14
Speaker 3: to be a dialysis machine. I didn't know what that
55:17
Speaker 3: meant at the time. It's a kind of premonition in
55:22
Speaker 3: a way, but it took a lot of pondering and
55:27
Speaker 3: a lot of time to think of it that way.
55:29
Speaker 3: For him, because he lost his ego strength, and he
55:33
Speaker 3: was unable to see it as an informative vision, then
55:37
Speaker 3: it becomes kind of a panic. Yeah.
55:41
Speaker 2: So I want to move maybe as kind of a
55:42
Speaker 2: final topic to talk a little bit more about active imagination.
55:46
Speaker 2: And you can read a lot about active imagination. We've
55:50
Speaker 2: done at least one episode on active imagination. And it
55:54
Speaker 2: was Jung's technique for inviting the unconscious to speak to you.
55:58
Speaker 2: You keep your ego in the room, but you really
56:02
Speaker 2: call the unconscious forward. And he felt that this was
56:06
Speaker 2: a technique that really speeded up psychological work. And Christiana
56:10
Speaker 2: Morgan was a brilliant, talented, uh, woman who came to
56:17
Speaker 2: Zurich and did some work with Jung. And she was
56:21
Speaker 2: very gifted as, uh, at this technique of active imagination
56:26
Speaker 2: and also a gifted artist. And if you're interested in
56:29
Speaker 2: Christiana Morgan, um, We had a wonderful episode with her granddaughter.
56:35
Speaker 2: So you can look on her back catalog and read
56:38
Speaker 2: more about that. So Jung told her about how to
56:41
Speaker 2: do active imagination. And here's what he said. Only use
56:45
Speaker 2: the retina of the eye at first in order to objectify.
56:48
Speaker 2: Then instead of keeping on trying to force the image out,
56:51
Speaker 2: you just want to look in. Now when you see
56:54
Speaker 2: these images, you want to hold them and see where
56:56
Speaker 2: they take you, how they change. And you want to
56:59
Speaker 2: try to get into the picture yourself to become one
57:01
Speaker 2: of the actors. When I first began to do this,
57:04
Speaker 2: I saw landscapes. Then I learned how to put myself
57:07
Speaker 2: into the landscape and the figures would talk to me
57:09
Speaker 2: and I would answer them. Then he advised her to
57:12
Speaker 2: write it all down, much as he did with the
57:15
Speaker 2: Red Book. The Red Book is essentially his record of
57:20
Speaker 2: his visions, of his active imaginations. And he took this
57:24
Speaker 2: material and gave a series of seminars about them, which
57:30
Speaker 2: were written up as the vision seminars. So we can,
57:35
Speaker 2: much like maybe shamans of old or fasting anchorites, induce
57:43
Speaker 2: some helpful visions through this technique of active imagination.
57:48
Speaker 3: I think that in the beginning, Jung put so much
57:54
Speaker 3: clinical evidence wisdom and curiosity into dream analysis and then
58:00
Speaker 3: as his life proceeded he came to think that active
58:05
Speaker 3: imagination that's that's the big guns if you really want
58:10
Speaker 3: stuff to start really moving learning how to get into
58:15
Speaker 3: the unconscious and how you would describe it is suspending
58:21
Speaker 3: the ego so that one can observe and participate in
58:26
Speaker 3: the unconscious level of the psyche is the place where
58:31
Speaker 3: all the big discoveries and big changes can happen.
58:45
Speaker 2: So today's dream comes from a 35 year old man
58:48
Speaker 2: who is a high school teacher and he has entitled
58:51
Speaker 2: it burning down my house. I'm living in this house
58:55
Speaker 2: at the top of a hill. It's a very modern
58:57
Speaker 2: looking house. I realized that I need to burn the
59:00
Speaker 2: house down. I grab a small flamethrower and start going
59:04
Speaker 2: around the house trying to light it on fire. I
59:07
Speaker 2: am cognizant that I need to work quickly before someone
59:10
Speaker 2: sees the fire and the fire department is called. I
59:13
Speaker 2: am also aware that I can't be too obvious because
59:16
Speaker 2: they can do forensics to see how it was burnt down.
59:19
Speaker 2: The house itself is made of a lot of stone, white,
59:23
Speaker 2: unburnable material, maybe granite. So there isn't actually much that
59:27
Speaker 2: will catch on fire. I'm running around the house lighting
59:30
Speaker 2: shelves and tables on fire, but it isn't really doing anything.
59:34
Speaker 2: I'm worried that I've started burning the house down, but
59:36
Speaker 2: it won't fully catch and I'll be caught in the act. Fortunately,
59:40
Speaker 2: I go outside and find that I can get under
59:43
Speaker 2: the house and the foundation floor joists are made of wood.
59:47
Speaker 2: So I light them on fire and the house fully
59:49
Speaker 2: catches and topples over. Right before the fire department shows up,
59:53
Speaker 2: a guy I know who I teach with, walks by
59:56
Speaker 2: me and says, just make sure you lie about not
1:00:00
Speaker 2: starting the fire and you'll get the $ 300, 000. He's referring
1:00:04
Speaker 2: to the home insurance. And for context, he says, I
1:00:08
Speaker 2: had this dream three months into really getting back on
1:00:11
Speaker 2: my soul path. It was the start of solstice season.
1:00:16
Speaker 2: And the main feelings were fear of being caught, certainty
1:00:20
Speaker 2: that it needed to be done, frustration that nothing on
1:00:23
Speaker 2: the main levels was catching on fire, relief that the
1:00:26
Speaker 2: floor joists lit and the house toppled. And he notes
1:00:31
Speaker 2: that the teacher that I ran into that told me
1:00:33
Speaker 2: to lie was an interesting twist in real life. I
1:00:37
Speaker 2: find him gruff and disconnected from his heart and his emotions.
1:00:41
Speaker 2: The house was not my style at all, very modern, sleek, sterile,
1:00:46
Speaker 2: and uncomfortable.
1:00:48
Speaker 3: One of the things that strikes me about this dream
1:00:50
Speaker 3: is that The ego is such a determined actor in
1:00:54
Speaker 3: the dream. In most dreams, the ego is a little
1:00:59
Speaker 3: bit more passive. It's being introduced to things that are
1:01:03
Speaker 3: novel to it. It's being asked things that it wasn't
1:01:07
Speaker 3: prepared for necessarily. There's kind of surprising elements to it.
1:01:12
Speaker 3: But this is a dream where the ego really has
1:01:16
Speaker 3: a mission and it is determined to succeed. and is
1:01:22
Speaker 3: being resourceful to do whatever is required in order to
1:01:26
Speaker 3: make it happen. To me, this is a bit interesting
1:01:30
Speaker 3: in that regard.
1:01:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mission is very clear, you know, and if
1:01:36
Speaker 2: we look at the stream using the notion of the
1:01:40
Speaker 2: dramatic structure, it has a very clear dramatic structure, and
1:01:44
Speaker 2: it has a clear resolution. He gets the house to
1:01:47
Speaker 2: burn down and topple, and it's totally unambivalent, right? He's
1:01:52
Speaker 2: just relieved when the house catches fire and topples. So
1:01:57
Speaker 2: the main action in the dream is a little bit
1:02:00
Speaker 2: perplexing because it's doing something that's so destructive. But I
1:02:05
Speaker 2: want to say that a lot of times when we
1:02:07
Speaker 2: really engage in deep psychological work, there is a sense
1:02:13
Speaker 2: of it being transgressive. Because in some sense, the work
1:02:18
Speaker 2: of individuation, it's always kind of a little bit radical
1:02:21
Speaker 2: and goes against the collective values and norms. So I
1:02:26
Speaker 2: don't know what this dream is about per se, but
1:02:30
Speaker 2: I do think that it's typical that when we're really
1:02:34
Speaker 2: engaged in deep psychological work, it may appear in dreams
1:02:39
Speaker 2: as something quite shocking. I thought it was interesting that
1:02:44
Speaker 2: what he was really worried about was like a half measure,
1:02:47
Speaker 2: that he might burn a few things, but it wouldn't
1:02:49
Speaker 2: really catch. And that is interesting to me in following
1:02:55
Speaker 2: my line of thinking, because there is a way that
1:02:58
Speaker 2: if we're going to make a psychospiritual change, if we're
1:03:02
Speaker 2: going to reorient our lives along a more psychospiritual axis,
1:03:08
Speaker 2: it will be the case that A half measure would
1:03:12
Speaker 2: be a disaster. You've got to make a full commitment.
1:03:17
Speaker 2: And that is really what this dream is about. At
1:03:20
Speaker 2: one level or another, it's about making a complete commitment
1:03:23
Speaker 2: to something. And burning, I mean, we could do a
1:03:27
Speaker 2: lot with this dream, looking at burning and fire as
1:03:29
Speaker 2: symbols and the archetype of fire. What I will say
1:03:34
Speaker 2: is that when you burn something, it's different than, say,
1:03:37
Speaker 2: burning a book is different than ripping it up. Both
1:03:40
Speaker 2: are ways of destroying it. But when you burn it,
1:03:42
Speaker 2: it's gone through a complete chemical transformation. So it's really
1:03:49
Speaker 2: quite profound to burn something from a psychological stance. It
1:03:53
Speaker 2: means something has really been changed in a final way.
1:03:57
Speaker 2: It can't be, it can't really be repaired. You know,
1:04:01
Speaker 2: a burned house that topples over is going to just
1:04:03
Speaker 2: have to be erased and you're going to have to
1:04:06
Speaker 2: start all over again. I can't, begin to imagine what
1:04:10
Speaker 2: that might look like in this person's life because he
1:04:12
Speaker 2: doesn't tell us a lot about himself.
1:04:14
Speaker 3: So I resonate with that larger arc that solving at Coagula,
1:04:20
Speaker 3: I mean, things have to break down before they can
1:04:22
Speaker 3: be rebuilt. A lot of times we can't just adorn
1:04:27
Speaker 3: an attitude inside of us or just add a little
1:04:31
Speaker 3: clever workaround and then just kind of get our marriage
1:04:35
Speaker 3: back on track. Sometimes it's whole new thing has to emerge.
1:04:41
Speaker 3: So I do, it does make sense to me in
1:04:44
Speaker 3: that regard. I also wonder if in just a very
1:04:51
Speaker 3: blunt way, the unconscious is saying, you're trying to burn
1:04:56
Speaker 3: something down in your life right now because you think
1:04:58
Speaker 3: there's going to be a reward at the end of it.
1:05:01
Speaker 3: Are you sure that's true? Do you want to think
1:05:05
Speaker 3: about whether you're burning down your relationship, burning down your career,
1:05:11
Speaker 3: burning down your relationship with your family or your lover,
1:05:14
Speaker 3: starting a war with your neighbor. And there's a lot
1:05:17
Speaker 3: of things that we could burn down thinking that, well,
1:05:22
Speaker 3: that's be out of the way. And then I can
1:05:24
Speaker 3: walk away with this resource, with the cash, and then
1:05:27
Speaker 3: I can have a new life somewhere else. I can
1:05:29
Speaker 3: use the resources to rebuild somewhere else. In the dream,
1:05:33
Speaker 3: he's doing it very methodically. If I think of the
1:05:35
Speaker 3: dream as compensatory, it may be that he's doing it
1:05:40
Speaker 3: unconsciously in one or more domains of his life, not
1:05:45
Speaker 3: knowing why things are falling apart, but that he himself
1:05:49
Speaker 3: is actually orchestrating the dissembling or the ruination of something.
1:05:55
Speaker 3: The unconscious can decide We've been clinging too long to
1:06:00
Speaker 3: a job, and it will foment discord and trick us
1:06:05
Speaker 3: into getting fired or trick us into making the job
1:06:08
Speaker 3: intolerable because we're not hearing the subtle signals that we
1:06:12
Speaker 3: need to move on. So there's something going on, and
1:06:17
Speaker 3: then there's also trickster. Let's burn down the house so
1:06:20
Speaker 3: we can get the insurance money. Let's make sure we're
1:06:23
Speaker 3: not caught. Let's lie. And then one of his friends
1:06:27
Speaker 3: is just to make sure, you know, that you treat
1:06:30
Speaker 3: the story in the right way so you can get
1:06:32
Speaker 3: the insurance payout. So there's something tricky going on at
1:06:38
Speaker 3: the moment in all of this that I'm wondering about.
1:06:42
Speaker 2: So I'm going to just come at it from a
1:06:47
Speaker 2: slightly different point of view. I totally see what you're saying.
1:06:51
Speaker 2: You can't exhaust a dream. Of course. So considering all
1:06:55
Speaker 2: of these, holding them together, it isn't about one is
1:06:59
Speaker 2: right and one is wrong. I was really struck on
1:07:02
Speaker 2: a kind of feeling level by this idea that he
1:07:05
Speaker 2: had to go out the house and underneath it. It's
1:07:08
Speaker 2: almost like he had to get at the very foundation
1:07:11
Speaker 2: of the thing. So again, it can't be a superficial
1:07:16
Speaker 2: torch job. You have to root it out at the foundation.
1:07:20
Speaker 2: The fact that he says that the house wasn't at
1:07:22
Speaker 2: all his style is interesting. And I could have a
1:07:25
Speaker 2: fantasy that he had created a life for himself based
1:07:30
Speaker 2: on something that didn't feel true to him. And now
1:07:33
Speaker 2: it needs to be destroyed. You know, he's 35. It's
1:07:36
Speaker 2: kind of a midlife thing. I don't know if that's
1:07:38
Speaker 2: true or if it's more along the lines of what
1:07:41
Speaker 2: you're saying. I do think the other person in the
1:07:45
Speaker 2: dream is really interesting. Of course, we would think of that.
1:07:47
Speaker 2: This is a shadow figure. And the dreamer says, wow,
1:07:50
Speaker 2: you know, he's really kind of cut off from his emotions. Okay.
1:07:54
Speaker 2: So the shadow figure, the shadow part of the dreamer
1:07:58
Speaker 2: would be an aspect of him that is able to
1:08:01
Speaker 2: be a little bit cold, calculating and ruthless. And sometimes
1:08:06
Speaker 2: we need a little bit of that energy. I mean,
1:08:08
Speaker 2: I'm not immediately thinking that the trickery is negative. Of course,
1:08:12
Speaker 2: if this were in waking life, it would be horrendous. And,
1:08:15
Speaker 2: you know, I would, I would strongly condemn it. But
1:08:18
Speaker 2: sometimes the sneaky thing that looks really transgressive, that, you know,
1:08:23
Speaker 2: when we lie, when we steal in dreams, it sometimes
1:08:28
Speaker 2: is an image of a part of us reaching for
1:08:32
Speaker 2: something that we don't yet feel entirely entitled to yet.
1:08:38
Speaker 2: So if, for example, and I'm just having a fantasy,
1:08:41
Speaker 2: this dreamer is in the process of realigning, and maybe
1:08:48
Speaker 2: reimagining his life more along the lines of something that
1:08:53
Speaker 2: rises up from deep within, he might need to burn
1:08:57
Speaker 2: the old thing down, and he might need a little
1:09:00
Speaker 2: bit of trickster energy to feel entitled to take the
1:09:06
Speaker 2: life force that becomes available as a result of doing
1:09:10
Speaker 2: so and set out on a new course with it.
1:09:15
Speaker 3: I can see that. I think that makes perfect sense.
1:09:18
Speaker 3: And again, I would be asking him, because the ego
1:09:21
Speaker 3: is so involved, where does he think this applies? Where
1:09:26
Speaker 3: might this be happening? Where might it need to happen
1:09:29
Speaker 3: that it's not happening yet? And so he's being given
1:09:32
Speaker 3: a bit of an instruction, a symbolic instruction manual. And
1:09:37
Speaker 3: I think the fact that the unconscious figure is giving
1:09:41
Speaker 3: him advice, making sure he can profit on it, suggests
1:09:45
Speaker 3: that Psyche is kind of aligned with with what's happening.
1:09:49
Speaker 3: I mean, the dream maker could send firemen and policemen,
1:09:53
Speaker 3: could add a bunch of other things to thwart this,
1:09:55
Speaker 3: but it's not. The dream maker is allowing him to
1:09:59
Speaker 3: fully experience needing to do it and figuring out how
1:10:03
Speaker 3: to do it and successfully accomplishing it. By the way,
1:10:06
Speaker 3: there's also an issue of danger here with the ego.
1:10:11
Speaker 3: It seems totally immune to. I can't imagine crawling under
1:10:16
Speaker 3: my house in the crawl space. setting the joists on
1:10:20
Speaker 3: fire and just feeling totally confident I'll be able to
1:10:23
Speaker 3: scurry out as the conflagration begins just in time. These
1:10:28
Speaker 3: are tricky situations, walking through your house, setting it on
1:10:32
Speaker 3: fire as if you couldn't possibly imagine getting burned. So
1:10:36
Speaker 3: there's a great confidence, or perhaps a bit of an inflation.
1:10:43
Speaker 2: And how do we work with that and understand it
1:10:45
Speaker 2: when we have a dream like this? I think this
1:10:47
Speaker 2: is a great example, right? Because it could be really
1:10:51
Speaker 2: kind of like a warning dream or it could be
1:10:54
Speaker 2: a attaboy dream. And part of how we would know
1:10:59
Speaker 2: that would be to know more about the dreamer's personal situation.
1:11:06
Speaker 2: So it's a great example of a dream that could
1:11:10
Speaker 2: be understood differently. I think really, you know, kind of
1:11:13
Speaker 2: in one direction or another, it could have a kind
1:11:15
Speaker 2: of positive valence or a negative valence. Both are very legitimate.
1:11:20
Speaker 2: And we wouldn't really know which unless we looked at
1:11:25
Speaker 2: the surrounding life.
1:11:27
Speaker 3: And it's not often a binary that.
1:11:29
Speaker 2: Right.
1:11:29
Speaker 3: I mean, let's say that you are kind of burning
1:11:32
Speaker 3: down your old job because it's time to leave and
1:11:34
Speaker 3: you'd like to walk away with a... kind of a $ 300, 000 package,
1:11:39
Speaker 3: you know, as you move on to your next job.
1:11:42
Speaker 3: That's neither good nor bad. I think the unconscious rarely
1:11:46
Speaker 3: criticizes us, but it's always describing us.
1:11:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. And so
1:11:53
Speaker 2: it could be both, right? It could be that the
1:11:54
Speaker 2: house needs to be burned down, but also, dude, you
1:11:57
Speaker 2: should be more careful. Don't let the burning house fall
1:11:59
Speaker 2: on you.
1:12:00
Speaker 3: There's a bit of risk here that is not being
1:12:03
Speaker 3: attended to very much. just from a naturalistic lens.
1:12:07
Speaker 2: Absolutely. It's a great dream. Thanks for listening. To submit
1:12:12
Speaker 2: a dream, suggest an episode topic, or join our mailing list,
1:12:15
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