Today, I want to share something familiar, maybe ordinary, yet an important issue: Marriage! Of course, we can translate it into the modern language as a partnership, friendship, bedmate or lifemate, etc. But the main point is how much a couple should merge into each other, how close they must be and how deep.
Rene Magritte; Perfect Woman
I’ve had various experiences in the realm of relationships. I’ve had many different connections with different women, and you can imagine how much effort it took to understand the intricacies of this adorable gender. However, my current wife is the first and only one I’ve married. It took me about twenty-three years until to say “yes” and marry her and two more years to move in together. It wasn’t easy for either of us, but we’ve slowly but surely learned to respect each other’s boundaries and individualities over the years. We share one Life but have our own dreams, all while maintaining love and respect for each other.
I have spent my life trying to understand the crucial topic in psychology called individuality. I finally succeeded with the help of Dr. Jung. It is essential for discovering and proving my uniqueness.
As it turns out, Kahlil Gibran also agrees with me. Here, I share a part of his book, “The Prophet”, about Marriage. I hope you enjoy reading it. Thanks, and have a peaceful weekend.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone. Even as the strings of a lute are alone, though they quiver with the same music.
“Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course_” Text and art by Kahlil Gibran
On Marriage, From the Book “The Prophet”
An illustration of Khalil Gibran. (Shutterstock)
Then Almitra spoke again and said: And what of Marriage, master? And he answered, saying: You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone. Even as the strings of a lute are alone, they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
Translated from volumes published by Lorenz Jung based on the edition “Gesammelte Werke” dtv.de The Symbols of Transformation (1952) and Aion (1950)
Here, I present another aspect of “Mana—Personality,” and honestly, I’m getting more and more excited to delve deeper and deeper into the subject! (The past episodes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,) In this part, Jung continues explaining the concept of Mana and its impact on our lives from childhood to adulthood. He describes our inner try of separation from our parents, the process of growing up within a religious context, and the acknowledgement of God. He also provides an excellent explanation of our attitudes and behaviours towards authority figures and those in power.
By distinguishing the “I” from the archetype of the Mana Personality, one is now compelled – just as in the case of the anima – to make conscious those unconscious contents which are specific to the Mana Personality. Historically, the Mana Personality is always in possession of the secret name or of the special knowledge or the prerogative of a special action (quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi), in a word: of Individual Distinction. Becoming aware of the content that builds up the archetype of the Mana Personality means for the man the second and true liberation from the father, for the woman from the mother and thus the first feeling of her own individuality. This part of the process corresponds precisely to the intention of the concrete primitive initiations up to baptism, namely the separation from the >carnal< (or >animal<) parents and the rebirth >in novam infantiam<, into the state of immortality and spiritual childhood, as formulated by certain ancient mystery religions, including Christianity.
One may not identify with the Mana Personality, opting to view it as an extramundane ‘Father in Heaven’ embodying Absoluteness, which many find significant; if faith is achieved, this leads to an absolute dominance of the unconscious, causing the entire world to flow toward it.
(Absolute means “detached”. To declare God to be absolute is to place him outside of all connection with man. Man cannot act on him, and he cannot act on man. Such a God would be a completely irrelevant thing. One can, therefore, only reasonably speak of a God who is relative to humans as is to God. The Christian conception of God as a “Father in heaven” expresses the relativity of God in exquisite form. Quite apart from the fact that man can make out less about God than an ant can about the contents of the British Museum, this urge to declare God absolute arises only from the fear that God might become ‘psychological’. That would, of course, be dangerous. An absolute God, on the other hand, is of no concern to us at all, whereas a “psychological” God would be real. This God could reach man. The Church seems to be a magical instrument to protect man from this eventuality, for it is said that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”.)
The logical consequence of this is that only a miserable, inferior, useless and sin-laden bunch of people remains. As is well known, this solution has become a historical worldview. Since I am only moving on psychological ground here and have no inclination to dictate my eternal truths to the universe, I must critically note that if I push all the highest value onto the side of the unconscious and construct a summum bonum from it, I have found myself in the unpleasant position of also inventing a devil of equal weight and size who maintains the psychological balance of my summum bonum. But under no circumstances will my modesty allow me to identify myself with the devil. That would be too presumptuous and would also put me in unbearable opposition to my highest values. But I cannot afford that, given my moral deficit.
That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ — all these are undoubtedly great virtues. ~C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections Carl Jung Depth Psychology
For psychological reasons, I would, therefore, recommend not constructing a God from the archetype of the Mana Personality, that is, not making it concrete, because, in this way, I avoid projecting my values and non-values onto God and the devil, and, in this way I preserve my human dignity, my own specific weight, which I need so much in order not to become the unresisting plaything of unconscious powers. When you deal with the visible world, you have to be crazy to assume that you are the master of this world. Here, the principle of non-resistance to all superior factors is naturally followed up to a certain individual limit. At this point, even the most peaceful citizen becomes a bloody revolutionary. Our bowing to law and state is a recommendable model for our general attitude toward the collective unconscious. (>Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. <) Our bowing would not be difficult up to this point. But there are also factors in the world to which our conscience does not necessarily say yes, and we bow before them. Why? It is practically more beneficial than the opposite. Likewise, there are factors in the unconscious where we have to be nothing but clever. (>Do not resist evil. < >Make friends for yourselves in the huts of unjust mammon. < >The children of the world are cleverer than the children of light<, ergo: >Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. <)
Translated from volumes published by Lorenz Jung based on the edition “Gesammelte Werke” dtv.de The Symbols of Transformation (1952) and Aion (1950)
Continuing the concept of Mana-Personality, Dr. Jung advises us not to underestimate the unconscious mind and even offers a prescription for better managing this issue. (I dearly share here the last parts, 1–2–3–4–5, if someone wants to check out!)🙏
As I read more from Dr. Jung, I find that the issues he discusses do not pertain to a specific time period; they are fundamental and timeless, as we can clearly observe them in the present.
So, I believe following his concepts can heal our ailing society. He did an excellent job of helping us understand our inner unknown. Let’s read another chapter of this Mana riddle.
Individuation The Mana Personality (P6)
The Mana personality develops historically into a heroic figure and a god-man (according to popular belief, the highest Christian king could cure epilepsy with his Mana by laying on hands), whose earthly figure is the priest. The analysts can tell us something about how much the doctor is still a man-personality. Insofar as the “I” apparently draws the power belonging to the anima to itself, the ego becomes a mana personality. This development is an almost regular occurrence. I have never seen a more or less advanced development process of this kind where identification with the archetype of the Mana personality did not take place, at least temporarily. And it is the most natural thing in the world that should happen this way because not only you do expect it yourself, but everyone else expects it too. One can hardly help but admire oneself a little because one has seen deeper than others, and the others have such a need to find somewhere a tangible hero or a superior wise man, a leader and father, an unquestionable authority, that they are very willing to build temples and burn incense to even petty gods. It is not just the lamentable foolishness of the uncritical followers but a psychological law of nature that what was before will always be again. And this will always be the case as long as consciousness does not interrupt the naive concretization of the archetypes. I do not know whether it is desirable for consciousness to alter the eternal laws; I only know that it sometimes alters them and that this measure is a vital necessity for certain people, which, however, does not prevent them from placing themselves on the throne of the father in order to make the old rule come true once again. Indeed, it is difficult to see how one could escape the overwhelming power of the archetypes.
Johfra Bosschart Occult Surrealist
I don’t believe that one can escape this overwhelming power. One can only change one’s attitude towards it and thereby prevent oneself from naively falling into an archetype and then being forced to play a role at the expense of one’s humanity. Being obsessed with an archetype turns a person into a mere collective figure, a kind of Mask behind which humanity can no longer develop but instead increasingly atrophies. One must, therefore, be aware of the danger of falling prey to the dominant Mana personality. The danger is not only that one becomes the FatherMask oneself but also that one falls prey to this Mask if someone else wears it. In this sense, master and student are the same.
The dissolution of the anima means that one has gained insight into the driving forces of the unconscious, but not that we have rendered these forces ineffective ourselves. They can attack us again in a new form at any time. And they will inevitably do so again if there is a gap in the conscious attitude. Power stays against power. When the “I” assumes power over the unconscious, the unconscious reacts with a subtle attack, in this case, with the dominance of the Mana personality, whose enormous prestige captivates the “I”. The only way to protect oneself against this is to fully admit one’s own weakness in the face of the forces of the unconscious. In this way, we do not oppose the unconscious with power, and as a result, we do not provoke the unconscious either.
Illustration: Nikolai Zaitsev
It may sound strange to the reader when I speak of the unconscious, so to speak, in a personal way. I do not want to provoke condemnation by thinking of the unconscious as personal. The unconscious consists of natural processes that lie beyond the human-personal. Only our consciousness is >personal<. So when I talk about >provoking<, I don’t mean that the unconscious is somehow offended and – like the old gods – does something to someone out of jealousy or vengeance. I often mean something like a psychological diet error that upsets my digestion. The unconscious reacts automatically, like my stomach, which figuratively takes revenge on me. If I assume power over the unconscious, that is a psychological dietary error, an unsatisfactory attitude that is best avoided in the interest of one’s own well-being. My unpoetic comparison is, however, a little too mild considering the far-reaching and devastating moral effects of a disturbed unconscious. In this respect, I would prefer to speak of the vengeance of offended gods.
Translated from volumes published by Lorenz Jung based on the edition “Gesammelte Werke” dtv.de The Symbols of Transformation (1952) and Aion (1950)
Recently, on X (Twitter), during one of Perian’s talks titled “The Way of Democratic Talk,” someone mentioned that social morals are crucial for keeping people mindful of their behaviour towards others. I responded that social morals are relative and not constant; throughout human history, they have consistently changed after wars or revolutions. I prefer to use the word “conscience.” Another friend said she would stick with “morals” because she was tired of having a guilty conscience. I replied that conscience is based on inner awareness and individuality and, therefore, has a more substantial and profound foundation, strengthening our consciousness as individuals.
Anyway, it was a prologue to noticing that words like consciousness, ego, anima, and their influential product, Mana, are important to take seriously. Mana may sound strange and unknown, but we all have it inside us!
Jung has always attempted to clarify that good and evil exist within every human and has made significant efforts to help us realize that it all depends on us to recognize these and find the balance between them.
Illustration at the top: NIKOLAY ZAITSEV
Here, in the continuation of the first part, I share some more words from this magical Mana.
Individuation The Mana Personality (P2)
‘Parsifal’ illustrations for Richard Wagner’s opera by Franz Stassen.
Who has now come to terms with the anima? Apparently, the conscious “I”, and therefore the “I”, has taken over the Mana. In this way, the conscious “I” becomes the Mana personality. The Mana personality, however, is a Dominant of the collective unconscious, the well-known archetype of the mighty man in the form of the hero, the chief, the magician, the medicine man and saint, the lord of men and spirits, the friend of God.
This is now a male collective figure that emerges from the dark background and takes possession of the conscious personality. This psychological danger is of a subtle nature; by inflating consciousness, it can destroy everything that has been gained through the confrontation with the anima. It is, therefore, of no minor practical importance to know that in the hierarchy of the unconscious, the anima is only the lowest level and one of the possible figures and that its overcoming creates another collective figure that now takes over its Mana. In reality, it is the figure of the magician – as I will call her in short – that draws the Mana, that is, the autonomous value of the anima to itself. Only insofar as I am unconsciously identical with this figure can I imagine that I myself possess the Mana of the anima. But under these circumstances, I will do so infallibly.
SD World _ Youri Ivanov _ Jouris Kunst
The figure of the magician has a no less dangerous equivalent for women: it is a maternal, superior figure, the great mother, the all-merciful one who understands everything and forgives everything and always wanted the best, who always lived for others and never sought her own, the discoverer of great love, just as it is the herald of the ultimate truth. And just as great love is never appreciated, great wisdom is never understood either. And they can’t stand each other at all.
There must be a serious misunderstanding here because it is undoubtedly a case of inflation. The “I” has appropriated something that does not belong to it. But how did it appropriate this Mana? If it really was the ego that overcame the anima, then the Mana also belongs to it, and then the conclusion is correct: one has become significant. But why does this significance, the Mana, not affect others? That would be an essential criterion! It does not work because one has not become significant but has simply merged with an archetype, another unconscious figure. So, we must conclude that “I” has not overcome the anima and, therefore, has not acquired the Mana. It is just that a new merger has occurred, with a figure of the same sex that corresponds to the father’s imago and has perhaps even greater power.
From the power that binds all beings, The person who overcomes himself frees himself< (Goethe: The Mysteries. A Fragment, in. Works in ten volumes, Vol. 7, 1962)
Thus, he becomes a superman, superior to all powers, a demigod, perhaps even more. ‘I and the Father are one’, this powerful confession in all its terrible ambiguity stemming from precisely this psychological moment.
One essay from Thus Spoke Zarathustra: The Speeches of Zarathustra.
I took on another challenging task, even though I didn’t have as much time as I thought! Nevertheless, I managed to translate another part of Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” which I believe closely relates to the current human situation and way of life. Although Nietzsche seems to be a bitter and pessimistic philosopher, I find that he made valid points about the human condition that, in my opinion, he addressed reasonably.
His writing style is poetic and difficult to translate, using old-fashioned German. I did my best to make it more apprehensive. I hope you enjoy it.🙏💖🌹
(The word Hinterweltler literally means Backworlders, but he intends to show the unknown people living behind and around the subjects, unaware of the centre. I couldn’t find any word in English that matched this one, so I didn’t translate it!).
About The Hinterweltler
Zarathustra once cast his madness beyond man, like all other Hinterweltlers. The world seemed to me to be the work of a suffering and tormented God.
The world seemed to me a dream, the poetry of god-coloured smoke before the eyes of one who was divinely dissatisfied.
Good and evil and pleasure and pain and I and you – it seemed to me like coloured smoke before creative eyes. The Creator wanted to look away from himself – so he created the world. It is a drunken pleasure for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and lose himself. The world seemed to me to be one and the same: drunken pleasure and losing oneself.
This world… eternally imperfect, an image and an imperfect image of an eternal contradiction – a drunken pleasure of its imperfect Creator – so the world once seemed to me.
So I, too, once cast my madness beyond man, like all Hinterweltlern. Beyond man in truth? Their books, too, this God that I created was the work of man and madness, like all gods!
He was human, and only a poor piece of human and I: This ghost came to me from my own ashes and embers, and honestly! It did not come to me from the beyond!
What happened, my brothers? I overcame myself, the sufferer, I carried my own ashes to the mountain, I invented a brighter flame for myself. And behold! Then the ghost left me!
It would be suffering for me now and torment for those who have recovered to believe in such ghosts: it would be suffering for me now and humiliation. So I speak to the Hinterweltlern.
It was an unfortunate, and inability – that created all the Hinterweltlern: and that brief madness of happiness that only the most suffering experience.
Tiredness that wants to reach the last will with one leap; with a deathly leap, one poor, ignorant tiredness that no longer even wants to want: that created all gods and Hinterwelten. Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired at the end – it heard the belly of the being speaking to it. And then it wanted to go through the last walls with its head, and not just with its head – over to “that world”.
But ‘that world’ is well bent before man, that dehumanized, inhuman world which is a heavenly nothingness, and the belly of being does not speak to man at all, unless as a human being.
Truly, all beings are difficult to prove and difficult to make them speak. Tell me, brothers, is it not the most wonderful of all things, the best proven?
Yes, this ego and the ego’s contradiction and confusion still speaks most honestly about its being, this creative, willing, evaluating ego, which is the measure and the world of things. And this honest being, the ego – that speaks of the body, and it still wants the body, even when it writes poetry and raves and flutters with broken wings.
Constantly learns to speak more and more honestly, the ego: and the more it learns, the more it finds words and honours for body and earth. My ego taught me a new pride, and I teach it to people: no longer to bury one’s head in the sand of heavenly things but to carry it freely, an earthly head that gives meaning to the earth!
The Cyclops Sun
I teach people a new will: to want this path that man has blindly walked, to welcome it, and no longer sneak away from it like the sick and dying.
It was the sick and dying who despised body and earth and found the heavenly and the redeeming blood stopper, but they also took these sweet and dark poisons from body and earth.
They wanted to escape their misery, and the stars were too far away for them. Then they sighed: >Oh if only there were heavenly ways to sneak into another existence and happiness!< – So they invented their tricks and bloody potions! They thought they were now removed from their bodies and this earth, these ungrateful people. But whom did they thank for their rapture, their pain and their bliss? Their bodies and this earth.
Zarathustra is gentle with the sick. Indeed, he is not angry with their forms of consolation and ingratitude. May they recover and conquer and create a higher body for themselves! Zarathustra is not angry with the recovering people either when he looks tenderly upon their madness and sneaks around the grave of their God at midnight: But illness and a sick body remain for me, and their tears still remain.
There have always been many sick people among those who write poetry and are God-addicted; they furiously hate those who know and that youngest of virtues, which is called honesty.
They always look back to dark times. Of course, madness and faith were two different things then; the madness of reason was godlike, and doubt was a sin.
I know these godlike people all too well: They want people to believe in them, and doubt is a sin. I also know all too well what they themselves believe in best.
Truly not in the Hinterwelten and redeeming drops of blood, but they instead believe best in the body, and their own body is their thing for itself.
But it is a sick matter to them, and they would gladly lose their temper. That is why they listen to the preachers of death and preach about the Hinterwelten.
Listen to me instead, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body: This is a more honest and purer voice.
The healthy body speaks more honestly and more purely, the perfect and right-angled one: And it speaks of the meaning of the earth.
What matter is with you? Regina, my wife, asked me a few days ago. I looked at her with confusion and asked what she meant. She said she was referring to my lack of enthusiasm towards my work; I used to be excitedly busy with my WordPress and would run to my room every morning to write a new story, but she noticed that I had lost that passion lately. After considering this, I had to admit that she was right. I seem to be losing the drive and motivation to create new stories. As I analysed myself, like so often I do, I have noticed that I am (too much) involved in very high themes with such great individuals like Dr Jung, Nietzsche, Gibran, etc., and I feel a bit exhausted, “intermingle with the greats is not everybody’s job!”
Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra, 1875-1876, by Gustave Moreau – Art Institute of Chicago
I believe that one’s expectations are crucial in determining success. I have noticed that with each article I write, I tend to push myself to do better and aim higher, which might be good. (I must thank YOU, all my lovely friends, who inspired me so much).🙏💖🙏 But, I have also realized that sometimes I may have gone too far, just like Icarus, whose wings melted in the sun’s rays and fell. This is where the book ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens becomes relevant. We must be honest with ourselves and know where we stand. Ultimately, happiness is not an unachievable goal but a state of inner peace and calmness.
Hence, I decided to come down and take it more easily. Although this new post is from Nietzsche, as I stumbled upon lately, it is a short text and relevant today: losing the child inside us! This child gives us the imagination to have fantasies. Nietzsche noticed it centuries ago, and it is didactic.
The Free Spirit, from Beyond Good and Evil, par. 31, by Friedrich Nitzsche
I had to work on translation to make Nietzsche’s complex grammar more understandable!😉
At a young age, one worships and despises without that art of nuance, which is the best gain in life, and one has to pay a fair amount of punishment for having attacked people and things with Yes and No in this way. Everything is set up so that the worst of all tastes, the taste for the unconditional, is cruelly fooled and abused until people learn to put a little art into their feelings and rather dare to try something artistic, like the right ones do Artists of Life do. The anger and awe that characterizes youth does not seem to rest until it has manipulated people and things so that it can be vented on them – youth is itself something more counterfeit and deceitful. Later, when the young soul, tormented by loud disappointments, finally turns back suspiciously on itself, still hot and wild, even in its suspicion and remorse: How angry they are now, tearing themselves apart impatiently, how taking revenge for their long self-delusion as if they had been voluntary blindness! In this transition, one punishes oneself by distrusting the feelings; one tortures one’s enthusiasm through doubt; one even feels one’s good conscience as a danger, as it were as a self-concealment and a weariness of one’s finer honesty; and above all, they take orientation, fundamentally oriented against ‘youth’. – A decade later, they realize that all of this was still -youth!
Peoples and Fatherlands, Para. 242 (Or a word about a common Europe!)
In Iran, I put a lot of value on the West and its people, especially the Europeans. After WWII, the engagement by England and France to make a common Europe, which came to fruition by Germany and France, made me sincerely wish to belong to this intellectual and cultivated community. I had a dream in Iran of seeing people in all of Europe holding books in their hands as they walked on the streets, and yet, when we escaped and arrived in Germany, I realized that it was a dream after all! Great expectations? It might be; in any case, I still had high expectations from European society. But as I followed this beloved idea wholeheartedly, I became increasingly upset. I found those gatherings of the European governments, apart from significant fundamental differences in understanding freedom, a group under solid influence by lobbyists trying to get their own wins on their business.
Long story short, I want to present the opinion of the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche here. As we will notice, he recognized, however tough, the problems of this idea and predicted them beforehand.
Translated from “Werke in vier Bänden, Band 3, Jenseits von Gut und Böse”
Call it “civilization”, “humanization”, or “progress,” where the distinction of Europeans is now sought. Let’s simply call it, without praising or blaming, with a personal formula, the democratic movement of Europe: behind all the moral and political backgrounds that are pointed out with such a formula, an enormous philosophical process is taking place that is becoming more and more fluid – the process of similarity between Europeans, their growing detachment from the conditions under which climatically and class-bound races arise, their increasing independence from every particular milieu that for centuries wants to inscribe itself in soul and body with the same demands – i.e. the slow emergence of an essentially supranational and nomadic type of human being who, physiologically speaking, has a maximum of the art of adaptation and – strength as its typical distinction. This process of becoming a European can be delayed in speed by significant relapses. However, perhaps because of this, it gains and grows in intensity and depth – the now still raging Storm and Stress of the “national feeling” belongs here, as does the anarchism that has just emerged -: this process probably leads to results that its naive promoters and eulogists, the apostles of “modern ideas”, least want to count on. The same new conditions under which, on average, a levelling and mediation of people will emerge – a valuable, industrious, multi-purpose and employable herd animal; humans -are highly capable of giving rise to exceptional people with the most dangerous and attractive qualities. While that power of adaptation, which constantly tries out changing conditions and begins a new work with every gender, almost with every decade, does not make the power of the type possible at all, as the overall impression of such future Europeans will probably be that of many talkative, poor-willed and extremely employable jobs that require the master, the commanding one, like daily bread; while the democratization of Europe amounts to the creation of a type prepared for slavery in the finest sense: In individual and exceptional cases, the strong person will have to become stronger and more prosperous than he has perhaps ever been before – thanks to the unprejudiced nature of his training, thanks to the enormous diversity of practice, art and mask. I wanted to say that the democratization of Europe is simultaneously an involuntary event for the breeding of tyrants – the word understood in every sense, including the spiritual one.
“I must admit that I am still contemplating the mysteries of life. At this time, I wanted to share Socrates’ thoughts about the soul with you. But before that, some time ago, when the Iranian groups on Twitter (now X) were still more united (unfortunately, many differences have separated them!), one of our topics to discuss was whether AI could create art. The main question is: how much do we know about art? How much do we believe that art has a soul possessing such an intangible quality and AI can produce it as we do?
Honestly, I am worried about using AI because humans are naturally very lazy and comfortable; that’s why they like to be pampered! If you look at the story of this development, like the Alexas in the sitting room to the self-driving cars, it shows what will happen next.
Like our other muscles, our brains must be trained continuously to maintain our creativity and cognitive abilities. Otherwise, we risk losing our mental faculties. Nonetheless, we must observe what these “machines”, which we might have invented, will do!
The birth of the star child in 2001_ A Space Odyssey 1968
Actually, we are talking about what we don’t know exactly how it works: Soul, Creation, Art!? It made me wonder if we can differentiate between these in a world created by Mother Nature and how we attempt to do so with equal ability, though I believe art is a part of the creator’s essence, gifted us to use in our own creations.
Act 2, scene 2 of Hamlet
The question is whether we have forgotten something we should remember. Is it possible that our souls have lived before they entered our bodies? Socrates believed in some form of reincarnation, in which our souls know of their previous existence before they come into our bodies. These were his final words before facing the court, as conveyed by Plato.”
[… oh souls and before, before they were a man they were, without bodies, and they had consciousness. Plato Phaedo 76 c ]
[…. or are they remembered, or learn to remember if they are. Plato Phaedo 76 a ]
“So, Simmia, our souls existed before, without the human form, separate from the body and possessing knowledge”. Plato of Phaedus
How well Dr Jung found this lost connection to our buried memories under our consciousness!
The idea is that the soul is immortal, as Plato claims in “Plato Phaedo, or Phaedrus 74-76. In the dialogue, Socrates discusses the nature of the afterlife on his last day before being executed by drinking hemlock.
Phaedo presents four distinct arguments supporting the immortality of the soul, namely, the Argument from Opposites, the Theory of Recollection, the Argument from Affinity, and the final Argument. However, we focus on whether humans can create perfection or whether artificial intelligence (AI) is perfect. In my opinion, perfection does not exist in our lives, or at least not how we imagine it. Even gods seem to make mistakes! Despite humans’ constant pursuit of perfection, imperfection has a certain allure.
by Paolo Uberti
In any case, I believe that AI cannot create art like “wo-man-kind” can. For example, we can understand this fact when we observe the Mona Lisa, read Dostoevsky, read or watch Shakespeare, or read Rilke…! We have got a worthy gift, which we might awake to life and use it.
anthropomorphic human dinosaur as a black person by ZelrikAnnual Collective Mind by Shari3Dfashion monkey, city, 4k by BacababAI may see humans in more different forms: so, so, or so!!
I must confess I am a perfectionist. It’s not easy, I know. Perhaps this trait stems from my childhood traumas. However, I believe imperfection is natural and necessary. In the following, I have added a paragraph for those interested who might like to read.
Let’s see how Plato argues this:
The “Imperfection Argument” (Phaedo 74-76)
This is an argument for the existence of Forms and our possession of a priori concepts. Plato bases the debate on the imperfection of sensible objects and our ability to make judgments about those sensible objects. (The Forms are supposed to be the perfect objects that the sensible only imperfectly approximate).
The argument in Phaedo 74-76 concerns the concept of Equality, but it could equally well be given concerning several different concepts (any concept that might have some claim to being an a priori concept).
The argument tries to show that we cannot abstract the concept of Equality from our sense experience of equal objects. For;
We never experience (in sense-perception) objects that are really, precisely equal, and We must already have the concept of Equality to judge the things we encounter in sense-perception to be approximately, imperfectly, equal. The argument can be schematized as follows:
We perceive sensible objects to be F. But every sensible object is, at best, imperfectly F. That is, it is both F and not F (in some respect – shades of Heraclitus??). It falls short of being perfectly F. We are aware of this imperfection in the objects of perception. So, we perceive objects to be imperfectly F. To perceive something as imperfectly F, one must consider something perfectly F, something that the imperfectly F things fall short of. (For example, we have an idea of Equality that all sticks, stones, etc., only imperfectly exemplify.) So we have in mind something that is perfectly F. Thus, there is something that is perfectly F (e.g., Equality) that we have in mind in such cases. Therefore, there is such a thing as the F itself (e.g., the Equal itself), distinct from any sensible object.
I am getting older (does not everybody do this?!), though I feel this ageing more and more as I’m heading towards my seventieth of that day in which I’ve opened my eyes to the sun. That’s why one may contemplate deeply about religion and the purpose of life, striving to understand and grasp the concept of God, as I am daring to do today.
When I became acquainted with C.G. Jung, I realized that I had found a guide who could help me think more clearly to find answers to my questions. I don’t know about you, but I believe that when ageing, one feels more solitude and begins to enjoy it. However, it’s important to note that he is not a saviour but rather a teacher who can point the way and offer valuable insights through his writings, particularly in his Red Book.
For me, the Red Book by Carl Jung is like the holy book. I may say it is like the Bible for a Christian, or the Koran for a Muslim, and the same as the Torah for a Jew, etc. The difference between them is that Dr Jung never tries to make statements of one particular God as their messenger but tries to define how a god can be definite! Here comes the concept: Supreme Meaning! The melting of sense and nonsense. And I think that this aspect needs a broad view.
The supreme meaning is great and small; it is as wide as the space of the starry Heaven and as narrow as the cell of the living body. C.G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus.
I present you a small part, a page, of his words of knowledge on this concept. I hope it opens one or more doors in your life as it did for mine.
The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable and the paradoxical. He rubbed me of speech and wrote me for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning. But the supreme meaning is the path, the way and the bridge to what is to come. That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself, but his image which appears in the supreme meaning. (1)
God is an image, and those who worship him must worship him in the image of the supreme meaning. The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity; it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together.
The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfilment. (2)
The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies; it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and blood of their collision, the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew.
The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actually corporeal and have no shadow?
The shadow is nonsense. It lacks force and has no continued existence through itself. But nonsense is the inseparable and undying brother of the supreme meaning.
Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadows and not the light.
The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself.
The supreme meaning is great and small; it is as wide as the space of starry Heaven and as narrow as the cell of the living body.
1- In Transformations and Symbol of the Libido (1912), Jung interpreted God as a symbol of the libido (CW B, §111). In this subsequent work, Jund laid great emphasis on the distinction between the God image and the metaphysical existence of God (cf. passages added to the revised retitled 1952 edition, Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, § 95)
2- The terms Hinübergehen (going across, passing over), Übergang (transition), Untergang (down-going, downfall), and Brücke (bridge) feature in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in relation to the passage from man to the Übermensch (superman). For example, “What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a “going-across” and a “downfall”. //I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a “downfall”, for they are those who are going over”(tr. R. Hollingdale [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984], p. 44, tr. mod; words are asunderlined in Jung’s copy).
“Without the true masculine spirit and true feminine love within, no inner life exists. To be free is to break the stone images and allow life and love to flow… ~Marion Woodman; taken from a beautiful poem by a brilliant poet, rhymester, and valuable friend of mine: Deborah Gregory.
I have resumed an (other) old series of my posts that I believe has become increasingly relevant in light of a recent webinar on X (formerly Twitter), where Iranian participants discussed the challenges faced by individuals of different genders and sexualities (LGBT+) in Iran. However, I refrained from discussing Dr. Jung’s theories on Anima and Animus, as I knew they were unfamiliar with this topic. During meetings, I don’t speak much due to my taciturn nature. Instead, I act as a microphone for my friend who lives in Iran and cannot clearly talk in the meetings.
In this particular webinar about gender, I noticed how important it is to know about the Jungian ideas about our species and the terms Anima and Animus in all of us, whether masculine or feminine. Marion Woodman says: “The word’ feminine,’ as I understand it, has very little to do with gender, nor is woman the custodian of femininity. Both men and women are searching for their pregnant virgin. She is the part of us who is outcast, the part who comes to consciousness through going into darkness, mining our leaden darkness, until we bring her silver out.”
Yes! Such terms are too early for a nation which is still under pressure from the masculine’s religious domain. I was surprised to hear discussions about such issues in a country still heavily influenced by traditional religious beliefs. That became possible because of the efforts of Shadi Amin, an LGBT+ activist at 6rang.org.💖🙏
Work by Petra Glimmdall 💖
To notice it is a big problem even in the West: I know many men here in Germany, where I live, who make jokes about the subject, and gay is a swear word for them! Of course, freedom, which is common in the West, can’t mean that the people have understood it profoundly. It can be difficult to grasp the concept fully, even though I have noticed numerous misconceptions in the Jungian groups on Facebook, and I see how many falsehoods have lost their way there!
In this scenario, it is crucial to maintain an open mindset and not be limited by fundamental rules and principles. I am not suggesting that one must always be “modern,” but rather that we should exercise our imagination. We should put aside our fears and dive into the world of fantasy.
After death, it is unimaginable that there would be feminine or masculine ghosts, for souls do not have a gender.
I’d like to share another explanation from Jung on this topic. As humans, we are filled with fears, anxieties, desires, and aspirations. Jung says in on this:
But there is something to be said about the fear of the other side that is peculiar to us Westerners. This fear is not entirely unjustified, not to mention the fact that it is real. We readily understand the child’s and the primitive’s fear of the vast, unknown world. We have the same fear in our childlike inner side, where we also touch a vast, unknown world… The fear is now justified insofar as the rational worldview (Weltanschauung) with its much-believed (because doubtful) scientific and moral certainties is being shaken by the data from the other side. There are truths that will only be true the day after tomorrow, those that were true yesterday, and those that will not be true at any time.
However, we can open many doors once we learn to embrace our inner selves and overcome the fear of the unknown. After reaching milestones one, two, three, and four, the next milestone could be number five – Last but not least!
anima and animus by polina sladkova
>”But I could imagine that someone would use such a technique out of a kind of holy curiosity, a boy perhaps who doesn’t want to put on wings because his feet are lame but because he longs for the sun. An adult, however, for whom too many illusions have been shattered, will probably only be forced to submit to this inner humiliation and abandonment and will once again endure the child’s fears. It is no small matter to stand between a day world of shattered ideals and unbelievable values and a night world of seemingly senseless fantasy. In fact, the uncanny aspect of this point of view is so significant that there is probably no one who would not reach for certainty, even if it were a “reach backwards” – for example, the mother who protected his (the son’s) childhood from night terrors. Those who are afraid need a dependency, like the weak, need support. That is why even the primitive spirit created the religious doctrine, embodied in magicians and priests, out of the most profound psychological necessity. “Extra ecclesiam nulla Salus” (“Outside the Church, there is no salvation”) – is still a valid truth today – for those who can drawback on it. For the few who cannot, there is only dependence on someone – a humbler and prouder dependency, weaker and more robust support than any, It seems to me. What shall one say of the Protestant? He has neither church nor priest; he only has God – but even God becomes doubtful.”<
Work by Petra Glimmdall 💖
>”The reader will probably ask himself in astonishment, but what does the anima produce that one needs such reassurances to deal with her? I would commend my reader for studying a comparative history of religions so that he feels the accounts dead to us with the emotional life felt by those who lived those religions. This will give him an idea of what lives on the other side. The old religions, with their sublime and ridiculous, benevolent and cruel symbols, did not arise out of thin air but out of this human soul as it lives in us now. All those things, their archetypes, live in us and can break out at any time with devastating force, namely in the form of mass suggestion, against which the individual is defenceless. Our terrible gods have only changed their name; they now rhyme with “ism”. Or does anyone have the voice to say that the World War or Bolshevism was an ingenious invention? Just as we live outwardly in a world where something similar can arise at any time, albeit only in the form of an idea, but no less dangerous and unreliable. Non-adjustment to this inner world is an omission just as fatal as ignorance and incompetence in the outer world. It is also only a tiny fraction of humanity, living chiefly on that densely populated peninsula of Asia projecting towards the Atlantic Ocean, who call themselves ‘the educated’, who, through a defective contact with nature, have conceived the idea that religion is a kind of peculiar mental disorder of inexplicable purpose. Seen from a safe distance, somewhat from Central Africa or Tibet, it appears as if this fraction had projected an unconscious “mental derangement” onto the still instinctively healthy peoples.”<
lampmagician 
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