The C.G. Jung Society of Queensland

President’s Letter

The Search for Meaning

Dear Readers,

Looking back over the variety of topics presented at our Jung Society since I became a member over seven years ago – Alchemy, Art therapy, Australian aboriginal culture, Chinese divination, Christian spirituality, Death, Depression, Dream work, Healing, Imagery, Mythology, Psychotherapeutic practice, Sandplay, Shadow, Shamanism, Society – I am reminded of how impressively learned Jung was.

Jung studied a vast amount of material that one could describe as the “archaeology” of the human psyche - myths, fairy tales, religion, mysticism, science, literature, art, philosophy, alchemy, anthropology. Although most learned in his own European culture, he also had a lively interest in Eastern philosophy and religion and in primitive cultures. It was because of his vast learning that he was able to recognise the archetypal contents of his patients’ unconscious, as manifested in their dreams and drawings, and to develop his theory of the collective unconscious.

Jung devoted his brilliant mind and his passion to the life-long task of making meaning of the suffering of the human psyche.

And, indeed, meaning is central to Jung’s theories on the healing of the psyche. In his paper “Psychotherapists or the Clergy”, published in Modern Man in Search of a Soul[1], he writes:

It is no reproach to the Freudian and Adlerian theories that they are based upon the drives; the only trouble is that they are one-sided. The kind of psychology they represent leaves out the psyche, and is suited to people who believe that they have no spiritual needs or aspirations… They are still bound by the premises of 19^th century science, and they are too self-evident – they give too little value to fictional and imaginative processes. In a word, they do not give meaning enough to life.

 And it is only the meaningful that sets us free.

 … A psycho-neurosis must be understood as the suffering of a human being who has not discovered what life means for him. … The patient is looking for something that will take possession of him and give meaning and form to the confusion of his neurotic mind. (p. 225. Emphasis mine).

For Jung, the discovery of meaning was closely allied with what he called a “religious attitude”. He wrote:

Among all my patients in the second half of life – that is to say, over thirty-five – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that everyone of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook. This of course has nothing to do with a particular creed or membership of a church. (p. 29)

For Jung, discovery of meaning is “attended by numinosity and accompanied by a sense of the awesome, the mysterious and the terrifying which are always connected to an experience of the divine…”[2]

This spark, I think, is ever ready to reach out and seize us when we live our own lives consciously.

This year we plan to continue to introduce a wide range of topics related to Jung’s thought in our monthly events. Perhaps the theme that will emerge from them is that of the discovery of meaning. This was certainly the case in our recent March presentation in which Victor Marsh talked to us about his spiritual biography “The Boy in the Yellow Dress”. Robyn Brady’s talk in February helped us to encourage the meaning-making of small children in their drawings. Varuna Dargan’s talk in May is about her discovery of meaning in the story of Mary Magdalene. And also in May, by popular request, Patrick Oliver will give a one-day workshop enlarging on the themes of spirituality that he inspired us with in his lecture last year. Marie Makinson’s presentation on Ego and Self in June will bring us back to basics.

We also have a number of events already in the pipeline for the second half of the year, as well as firm bookings for events with two Jungian analysts – Sarah Halford from the United States, who first visited us two years ago, and Sue Austin from Sydney (see the bottom of page 6).

Later in the year we plan to workshop ideas for a logo for the Society. We have been circling around the idea of creating our own logo for some time now, with faith that one will eventually emerge. There will be more news about this in our next newsletter.

At the beginning of every year we elect a new committee, and you will find this year’s committee listed on the back page of this newsletter. There are some new faces and some loyal “old” ones.  I have taken over the role of president following the resignation of Frank Coughlan. Being in this place prompts me to look back along the road to how I came here. It began (or should I say the visible part began) in about 1976, in Geneva, Switzerland, where I was working for the United Nations. One Saturday, I was browsing in the English language section of a bookstore accompanied by an attractive but tortured Canadian man (whom I later married). He pointed out to me Jung’s Four Archetypes. As a former children’s librarian I was very interested in myths and fairy tales. I bought the book and was hooked on the notion of archetypes, particularly that of the Trickster. I moved on to the books on fairy tales by Marie-Louise von Franz. And then of course there is nothing like the crucible of marriage to make one look into the conundrum of self and other. And so, on I went with Jung, reading all I could find of his works, eventually being part of both the English-language and the French-language Jung Societies in Montreal , Canada, attending every lecture and workshop offered there by Jungian analysts from Canada, the United States and Europe, entering analysis, discovering Embodied Dream Imagery, returning to Australia, joining the committee of this Society, and eventually deciding to train as a therapist (with, of course, a strong leaning towards Jung’s ideas). And still I have a great deal more to learn as I swim in the vast ocean of Jungian psychology!

Peace and Joy to you all

Anne Di Lauro

Upcoming events at the Jung Society

April 2007

Documentary Film

Matter of Heart: The Extraordinary Journey of C.G. Jung (1985)

Thursday 5 April 2007, 7:30 pm

St Mary’s Parish House, Cn Merviale and Peel Sts, South Brisbane

Members and concession $5; Non-members $10

This is a must see film for anyone interested in the life and work of Carl Jung. A Matter of Heart was produced by the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and includes rare footage and home movies of C. G. Jung in portraying the life and theories of this influential healer of the soul. A Matter of Heart is not just a glossy depiction of Jung but allows a rare insight into the man himself. Jung once said “Every light casts a shadow”, A Matter of Heart shows not only his light but demonstrates his shadow side as well by including an extensive range of interviews with his friends, colleagues, family, and patients to give us a fuller picture of C. G. Jung himself. A Matter of Heart also portrays life in the early days of Analytical Psychology and features such notable analysts as Marie-Louise  von Franz, Joseph Henderson, Barbara Hannah, Michael Fordham, Aniela Jaffe, Gerhard Adler, and C.A. Meier , and many others.     

May 2007

The Magdalene Mysterion: Waking the Global Heart

A presentation by Varuna Dargan

Thursday 3 May, 2007

7:30 – 9:30 pm

St. Mary’s House, Cn Merivale and Peel Sts, South Brisbane

Members and concession: $5; non-members $10

 
As Jung predicted in 1912, our search for deep personal meaning has been met by the re-emergence of the voice of the feminine divine power of the Gnostics into contemporary culture.  As if reaching through centuries of legend and heresy, adulation and contempt, fascination and neglect, the profound story - the beautiful story - of Mary Magdalene has captured our imagination.

Who, and what, was Mary Magdalene?  Our dedication to meaning leads us beyond the stories and controversies of her life to her essence.  And here we find her and the mystical truths she carries.  As an embodiment of Sophia - the animus mundi and original feminine principal - the archetypal Magdalene sparks in us a gnosis of the most powerful and ancient wisdom of the Great Mystery.
 
Through the doorways of “her-story”, traditional tales, gospels, and striking images, we will explore the deeper mysteries of the Magdalene, the “woman who knew the All”.  And through this discussion, we will consider – hopefully invoke - the redeeming power of the Divine Feminine for individual psychology and global sustainability.
 

Varuna Dargan was led to – or by – the Magdalene through a series of dreams and communications that began in the early ‘90’s, with a persistent inner female voice saying “I was there – there in the Garden of Gesthemene”.   She has learned to trust the one she calls ‘Maggie’ as her guide through sacred and sometimes unknown sites in France, offering her a narrative of the life and times of the Magdalene, as well as profound spiritual teachings.
 
A psychotherapist in the Jungian tradition, a sandplay therapist, and an artist, Varuna lives in Hawaii where she continues to write about the Magdalene. She and is currently creating her first exhibition of Magdalene paintings.

May 2007 Workshop

CARL JUNG AND GREAT THEMES OF SPIRITUALITY

A one-day workshop with Patrick Oliver

Saturday 26 May, 9:30 am to 4:30 pm

Quaker Meeting House, 10 Hampson St., Kelvin Grove

Cost: $60 (Members and concession $50)

"The destruction of the God-image is followed by the annulment of the human personality." (Aion, Collected Works 9ii, p.109)

Jung’s professional life begins in the corridors of the Burgholzli Mental Institute in Zurich Switzerland in 1900. The scope of his life’s work is breathtaking, yet the underlying theme of all his writing and investigations is that the human being needs to be connected in conscious awareness to her or his spiritual nature, and that the soul dies when not in a living connection with the numinous. To live apart from this awareness is to lay open the way into neurosis and eventual destruction.

Spirituality can be described in many ways. Some refer to it as the “search for meaning”, others call it “the call to connectedness”, still others see it as gobbledy-gook and a waste of time. In this workshop entitled “Carl Jung and Great Themes of Spirituality”, Patrick Oliver will look at the great themes that run through the world’s spiritualities, and how Jung’s writings can throw light upon these perennial truths of being deeply human. Seven of these themes will be examined, together with some “signs of maturing” that can help to highlight how these themes and Jung’s writings flow together.

PATRICK OLIVER works freelance in spirituality. He conducts retreats and workshops around South-East Queensland and beyond, and works full-time in spiritual direction. He is also a sessional lecturer in spirituality at Australian Catholic University at Banyo. He received a Master of Arts in Studies in Religion from University of Queensland in 1994, and a Doctor of Philosophy from Griffith University in 1999. He is a past President of the C.G. Jung Society of Queensland.

Patrick’s books are The Track Back: the Spirit in Australian Creation (1993) published by St Paul Publications; Drinking Deeply: Learning to Listen to the Song of Your Soul (1999), Getting Out of the Way: the Essence of Spirituality Put Simply (2002), and A God to Fall Into: Seven Echoes of the Great Adventure of Living in the Heart of God (2005), all of which are self-published.

"The feeling for the infinite ... can be attained only if we are bounded to the utmost ... Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other." (Memories Dreams Reflections p225)

June 2007

Ego and Self

A presentation by Marie Makinson

Thursday 7 June, 2007

7:30 – 9:30 pm

St. Mary’s House, Cn Merivale and Peel Sts, South Brisbane

Members and concession: $5; non-members $10

The Self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of the conscious mind. (C.G. Jung, CW vol 12, p. 175)

Self is a concept, Jung's most difficult and complex one because it is totality.

Self is an experience, emotional, religious, shattering and healing.

 (Vera von der Heydt)

Ego and self are complex terms that have entered into the discourses of psychology, philosophy and spirituality. The terms ego and self often cause confusion as they are assigned different meanings within the discourses of various disciplines.

The aim of this presentation is to explore Ego and Self in the Jungian tradition. Both of these concepts are highly paradoxical and difficult to grasp. Revisiting the material always rewards us with something new.

Primarily the exploration will proceed through the writing of C.G. Jung himself and follow the development through the work of Erich Neumman and Edward Edinger. There will also be a series of symbolic images to consider. These will give another dimension of meaning as we consider the profound nature of the relationship between ego and Self as Jung envisaged it.

The presentation will be in the form of a paper with room at different points for engagement. After a break we can come back for a more informal discussion.

Marie Makinson is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Northern NSW. She is a member of The Guild of Analytical Psychology and Spirituality in London.

Some dates to note in your diary for the second half of the year

Saturday 21 July            Sue Austin, Sydney-based Jungian analyst

“Eating Disorders and other Somatised Distresses – a Post-Jungian Approach”

                        Greenmount Beach Resort, Coolangatta, in conjunction with the Byron Jung Society.

Thursday 4 October       Sarah Halford, Jungian analyst, USA.

                                     “Samhain Stories: Healing through the dark time”

Saturday 6 October       Sarah Halford Workshop: “Myth and Ritual: Psyche’s Bedrock” 

JUNG AND MYSTICISM

Rosaleen McDade

Jung believed deeply in the therapeutic dimension of religion and became interested increasingly in Eastern and Western religious experience.  He wrote about Zen, Yoga, alchemy, Gnosticism, the Eucharist and mysticism.

Psychology shows the psyche to be multilayered.  Beneath the conscious mind lies the personal unconscious with its memories going back to childhood, to birth, and even to the womb.  Then there is the collective unconscious with its archetypal figures and its roots back in history.  As the depths of the ocean contain precious and beautiful treasures, so the unconscious mind contains beautiful treasures of wisdom and enlightenment.  It is an enchanting world.  But the unconscious mind is not all beauty.  It has also its darkness consisting of fears, anxieties, and traumas.  In addition there are unconscious or semi- conscious drives, addictions, and impulses that cannot be controlled by ‘I will’ and ‘I will not’ because they are outside the control of the conscious mind.  Again in the unconscious is a deep fear of death and a clinging to life.

The great healing process is growth and Jung believed this growth takes place as the unconscious becomes conscious. This can be a joyful experience but also a painful one as material from the hidden side of the personality flows into the conscious mind and is brought to light.  The great challenge is to face one’s shadow, to integrate and accept it.

Jung, being a scientist, emphasized that his theories were based on observable data from dreams, half-forgotten memories, myths and legends from his own experience and that of his many clients. He chartered the waters of the unconscious, devising tools for others to utilize and enhance. 

Jung emphasized that he was not addressing himself “to the happy possessors of faith but to those many people for whom the light has gone out, the mystery has faded, and God is dead. For most of them there is no going back, and one does not know either whether going back is always the better way.  To gain an understanding of religious matters, probably all that is left us today is the psychological approach.”(1)

This understanding, for Jung, meant a heightened experience of the immediate presence of God to human consciousness and being.  Psychologically, this meant the identification and recognition of those structures and forces within the psyche from which the experience of God could arise.  The numinous experience is revealed by archetypical images with the symbol of the Self being understood as a God-image.   Jung avoids identifying the Self with the transcendent God; emphasizing he writes as a scientist and psychologist about a God-like experience of encounter with the intrapsychic Self.  He does not say that what he calls the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place.  It is simply the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow.  As to what the further cause of such experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. The experience of the Self gives a kind of intuitional knowing leading toward psychic wholeness. Beyond this knowledge Jung claims is a further realm of faith by which certain theological assertions are made about the transcendent God.   

It often seems to be the case that intense preoccupation with the mystery of existence results in a vital life but few answers.  Jung was willing to call the mystery at the centre of life “God” because by doing so, he said, we are naming the unknown by the more unknown.  He did not consider himself as one possessing answers.  In the pages of his autobiography he said:

 “I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted to Him.  I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.” (2)   Later in the book he wrote:  “The older I have become, the less I have understood or had insight into or known about myself… There is nothing I am quite sure about… I exist on the foundation of something I do not know.  In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being.” (3)

MYSTICISM

 Are human beings more than conscious and unconscious? Is there a great mystery hidden in the depths of the human person of which psychology cannot speak? Is there another level of consciousness, external to the collective unconscious of the human psyche?  Is this mystery to be found by faith?

 Deeper than the personal or collective unconscious lies an area of mystery.  Buddhists speak of the Buddha nature; Hindus speak of Brahman and Atman; Hebrews speak of the image of  God; Christians speak of the indwelling Blessed Trinity, Eastern Christianity speaks of the uncreated energies; mystics of all persuasions speak of the ground of being, the centre of the soul, the true self, the void, emptiness, the cosmic energies. Anyone who uses this language must turn from science to faith.  Here there is no data; even the mystics eventually move beyond words into silence.

The mystical journey is a journey through darkness to light.  It is the work of the great mystery that lies at the depths of one’s being. Mystical experience is an awakening of God, a movement of the uncreated energies. It is a meeting between the inner centre of one’s being with the Supreme Being which draws from the known to the unknown to the known in a continuous spiral of developing awareness of the mysteries of creation and universal consciousness. On the one hand God is the mystery of mysteries beyond anything one can know.  On the other hand, one who has the gift of faith knows, by faith, that God gives help in the journey of life.  In this way, knowing and unknowing are combined in the prayer of those with faith.

In the heart of mystics - Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and others - there is a similar knowledge and experience of being loved rising in the heart.  The quiet conviction of the mystic is that it is a pure gift, and undeserved.  One who is quietly attentive to this presence feels the need for aloneness, without reasoning and thinking or anxiety or preoccupation, simply relishing the mysterious presence of God who dwells within. God is known as love which draws the soul into union with this essence of love and also into the unity of all beings in love. It is at this point that this mystical experience of absolute love transcends beyond the words of the greatest poetry of the mystics and fades into silence, known only in the depths of silence, stillness, and simplicity of the human heart.

Buddhism looks at the suffering of the world (dukkha); speaks of illusion (maya) and of the illusory separate self.  It speaks of dualism and of karma inherited from past lives.  It holds out the hope that all sentient beings, becoming Buddhas, will enter into nirvana.  This is the Buddhist mystical path in which the separate little ego is lost and all becomes one.

The Christian mystical tradition goes back to the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve were in harmony with themselves and the environment and lived in communion with God.  Using their free will they disobeyed God and fell from grace into a dualism which separated them from God, one another and earth.  The mystical path is a return to union with God, union with all men and women, union with the universe and union within themselves.  This journey is a struggle and would be impossible without God’s grace.

Bede Griffiths, shortly before his death, in his ashram in India where he had integrated Hinduism and Christianity said:

When I say, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, I think of Jesus as the Word of God, embracing heaven and earth and revealing himself in different ways and under different names and forms to all humanity.  I consider that this Word ‘enlightens everyone coming into the world’, and though they may not recognize it, it is present in every human being in the depths of their soul.  Beyond word and thought, beyond all signs and symbols, this word is being secretly spoken in every heart in every place and at every time.  (4)

In another article emphasizing the uniqueness of Jesus, Bede wrote:

The unique value of Christianity is its profoundly historic structure.  That to me is a key point.  Christ is not an avatara.  The incarnation is a unique historic event and Jesus is a unique historic person.  In gathering all things, all humanity and all matter, into one in himself, he transforms the world, bringing the cosmos back to its source in the transcendent Reality whom he called Abba, Father.  This is unique.(5)

Another Christian mystic, St John of the Cross cautions that the union with God can become so powerful that the soul appears to be God:

When God grants this supernatural favor to the soul, so great a union is caused that all the things of  both God and the soul become one in participant transformation, and the soul appears to be God more than a soul.  Indeed, it is God by participation.  Yet truly, its being (even though transformed) is naturally as distinct from God as it was before, just as the window, although illumined by the ray, has being distinct from the ray’s.(6)

SCIENCE

 During this century scientists everywhere have come to an acute realization of the unity of the universe. The old Newtonian world view has given way to a world view which sees the universe as a field of energy pervaded by consciousness. Penetrating into the secrets of the subatomic world, scientists have seen with a shock that the old logic no longer seems to apply; they are faced with a universe of uncertainty.

The English physicist, Paul Davies says that discoveries of 20^th century science offer evidence for some kind of divine order.  The fact that there is a deep hidden code in nature showing harmony, beauty and ingeniousness in the way the world is interconnected indicates an intelligent, law-like order in nature.  He discusses research from quite different specialties including biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy and neurology indicating a widespread tendency towards self-organisation and a capacity to cross critical thresholds into new stages of complexity.(7)

Science has discovered all the naturally occurring elements (except hydrogen and helium) are built up inside the stars through a process called nucleosynthesis and that our sun, earth and ourselves are made from the same source.  David Ellyard comments on this process:   “In this way was made all the iron we now find in our blood, all the phosphorus and calcium that strengthens our bones, all the sodium and potassium that drives signals along our nerves.  Atoms so formed are thrown off into space by aged stars in their death throes.  Natural forces recycle them into new stars, into planets and plants and people.  We are all made of stardust.”(9)

Over millions of years matter, life, and consciousness have formed one single history of evolution. It is of the nature of matter to develop toward consciousness, and the material universe achieves its own self-awareness in human persons. Carl Sagan writes that we human beings are ‘the local embodiment of a cosmos grown to self awareness’. (9) 

Many scientists are awed by the majesty of the universe recently discovered and are moved to call this mysterious something God.  They use the metaphor of God which is a redefinition of that which is found mysterious at the basis of the universe. This God of the scientist and cosmologist, however, is different from the God of religious faith and mysticism although there is, I believe, a relationship.

TOWARDS SYNTHESIS

 Carl Jung’s concern for the spiritual needs of his time led him to call for a restoration