Jung's key to understanding Magic and powers

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Hermetically Sealed, modified 10 Years ago at 6/28/13 7:09 AM
Created 10 Years ago at 6/28/13 7:09 AM

Jung's key to understanding Magic and powers

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Modern science overlooks the fact that we cannot have an experience of the seemingly external world without the presence of the psyche. The psyche is the organ through which we experience the seemingly outer world. This is to say that on a deeper level the inner psyche and the outer world are inseparably united parts of a greater, more all-encompassing whole. Modern humanity has fallen asleep to the primary importance of our own psyche in creating our experience, our world and ourselves. Physical laws are merely a manifestation of our own psyche.

One of Jung’s greatest discoveries is what he called “the reality of the psyche,” by which he means that the psyche exists in its own right, in its own open-ended sphere of seemingly unlimited influence. To quote Jung, “The psychic is a phenomenal world in itself, which can be reduced neither to the brain nor to metaphysics” (Note: “psychic” is used here as the adjective form of “psyche” and not with any parapsychological connotation). Jung is using the word “psyche” in an all-inclusive sense, as he means the totality of all psychic processes, both conscious and unconscious. Jung says, “For me, the psyche is an almost infinite phenomenon. I absolutely don’t know what it is in itself and know only very vaguely what it is not.” The psyche is not an epiphenomenon of biochemical processes in the brain, however, as it cannot be reduced to physical matter, or anything other than itself for that matter. Instead of the matter of the brain being the source of the psyche, to quote Jung, “We might well say, on the contrary, that physical existence is a mere inference, since we know of matter only in so far as we perceive psychic images.” The psyche can’t be factored out of our experience of either matter, or metaphysics, as it is inseparable from and connects both the seemingly opposite physical and metaphysical realms. Any physical or metaphysical experiences are mediated by the psyche by virtue of both of them essentially arising out of and being experiences within the psyche. Jung states, “Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche…It is the psyche which, by the divine creative power inherent in it, makes the metaphysical assertion; it posits the distinctions between metaphysical entities. Not only is it the condition of all metaphysical reality, it is that reality.”

Jung states, “For our only reality is psyche, there is no other reality.” The psyche is a mysterious, substance-less substance through which spirit and matter work out their seeming differences and intermingle so as to reveal their unity. To quote Jung, “Between the unknown essences of spirit and matter stands the reality of the psychic – psychic reality, the only reality we can experience immediately.” We never have an experience, of either the world or ourselves, except within the psyche . Jung writes, “The realm of psyche is immeasurably great and filled with living reality. At its brink lies the secret of matter and of spirit.” The psyche is the essence of humanity, its greatest instrument, an indefinable creative entity of enormous scope, subtlety and power that eludes all attempts to explain it, including this one. We should not forget that, to quote Jung, “when we say ‘psyche’ we are alluding to the densest darkness it is possible to imagine.” The psyche is a true mystery that is impossible to pin down. Jung comments, “In reality, there is nothing but a living body. That is the fact, and psyche is as much a living body as body is living psyche: it is just the same.” The world is the living psyche. Because the psyche is not separate from the farthest corners of the whole universe, Jung writes that “The psyche reflects, and knows, the whole of existence.”

We tend to not see the primary role the psyche plays in our world because it is the psyche through which we see the world in the first place. The psyche is simultaneously the object and subject of its own investigation. In observing the psyche, the observer is truly the observed.

Due to our unawareness of the key role that the psyche plays in our world, we experience this disassociation from our own psyche through the medium of the seemingly outer world. When we are inwardly disassociated, the external world gets dreamed up to continually embody and reinforce our disassociation. The external world is the canvas upon which the psyche gives shape and form to, as well as cultivates, its “inner” disassociation. The seemingly outer world gets “dreamed up” into materialization to reflect and play out, in full-bodied form, the inner state of disassociation within ourselves. And yet, due to our inner disassociation, we become convinced, or more accurately, entranced, that the problem exists outside of ourselves.

The nature of the psyche that Jung is pointing to is what in Buddhism is called “interdependent co-origination,” which means that no part of the universe has an independent existence “on its own,” separate from the rest of the universe; rather, everything is interconnected and depends for its existence upon everything else. Transcendent to linear causality, interdependent co-origination is an expression that all of the seemingly separate parts of the universe reciprocally co-arise as a singular, indivisible, radically interconnected whole.

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