Wholeness
Wholeness of the personality is achieved when the main pairs of opposites are relatively differentiated, that is, when both parts of the total psyche, consciousness and unconscious, are linked together in a living relation. But the dynamic gradient, the flow of psychic life, is not endangered, for the unconscious can never be made wholly conscious and always has the greater store of energy. The wholeness is always relative and gives us something to work on as long as we live.
Personality, as the complete realization of our whole being, is an unattainable ideal. But unattainability is no argument against the ideal, for ideals are only signposts, never the goal.
This path of self-development is called the process of individuation. This process, which aims toward "wholeness" or "integration", is one in which the different elements of the psyche, both conscious and unconscious, form a new unity. JViJP 87
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzppewk9a7I (Alan Watts on Yoga - Wholeness)
(In) the products of the unconscious we discover
mandala
symbols, that is, circular and
quaternary figures which express wholeness, and
whenever we wish to express wholeness, we employ just such figures.
Our basis is ego-consciousness, our world the field of light centered
upon the focal point of the
ego.
…. From
that point we look out upon an enigmatic world of obscurity, never knowing to
what extent the shadowy forms we see are caused by our consciousness, or possess
a reality of their own. The
superficial observer is content with the first assumption.
But closer study shows that as a rule the images of the unconscious are
not produced by consciousness, but have a
reality and spontaneity of their own.
Nevertheless, we regard them as mere marginal phenomena.
The aim … is to effect a reversal of the relationship between
ego-consciousness and the unconscious, and to represent the
unconscious as the
generator of the empirical
personality.
This reversal suggests that in the opinion of the “other side,” our
unconscious existence is the real one and our
conscious world a kind of
illusion, an apparent reality constructed for a specific purpose, like a
dream
which seems a reality as long as we are in it.
It is clear that this state of affairs resembles very closely the
Oriental conception of
Maya.
Unconscious wholeness therefore seems to me the true
spiritus rector of all biological and
psychic events. Here is a principle
which strives for total realization – which in man’s case signifies the
attainment of total consciousness.
Attainment of consciousness is culture in the broadest sense, and
self-knowledge
is therefore the heart and essence of this process.
The Oriental attributes unquestionably divine significance to the self,
and according to the ancient Christian view
self-knowledge is the road to
knowledge of God.
Although “wholeness: seems at first sight to be nothing but an abstract idea
(like anima and animus), it is nevertheless empirical in so far as it is
anticipated by the psyche in the form of spontaneous or autonomous symbols.
These are the quaternity or
mandala symbols, which occur not only in the
dreams of modern people who
have never heard of them, but are widely disseminated in the historical records
of many peoples and many epochs.
Wholeness
is thus an objective factor that confronts the subject independently of him,
like anima or animus;
and just as the latter have a higher position in the hierarchy than the
shadow, so wholeness lays
claim to a position and a value superior to those of the
syzygy.
The one and only thing that psychology can establish
is the presence of pictorial symbols, whose interpretation is in no sense fixed
beforehand. It can make out, with some certainty, that these symbols have the
character of “wholeness” and therefore presumably mean wholeness. As a
rule they are “uniting” symbols, representing the conjunction of a single or
double pair of opposites, the result being either a dyad or a quaternion.
The circle and quaternity symbolism appears at this
point as a compensating principle of order, which depicts the union of warring
opposites as already accomplished, and thus eases the way to a healthier and
quieter state (“salvation”).
For the present, it is not possible for psychology to
establish more than that the symbols of wholeness mean the wholeness of the
individual. On the other hand, it has to admit, most emphatically, that this
symbolism uses images or schemata which have always, in all the religions,
expressed the universal “Ground,” the Deity itself. Thus the circle is a
well-known symbol for God; and so (in a certain sense) is the cross, the
quaternity in all its forms, …
Wherever, therefore, we find symbols indicative of
psychic wholeness, we encounter the naïve idea that they stand for God.
The fact that this goal goes by the name of “God” proves that it has numinous character.
Each new image is simply another
aspect of the divine mystery immanent in all creatures. No more than an
amplification of a single transcendental idea, which is so comprehensive and so
difficult to visualize in itself that a great many different expressions are
required in order to bring out its various aspects.
Psychology, as I have said, is
not in a position to make
metaphysical statements. It can only establish that the
symbolism of psychic wholeness coincides with the
God-image, but it can never
prove that the
God-image is God himself, or that the self takes the place of
God.
From various hints dropped by
Hippolytus, it is clear
beyond a doubt that many of the Gnostics were nothing other than psychologists.
Thus he reports them as saying that “the soul is very hard to find and to
comprehend,” and that knowledge of the whole man is just as difficult.
“For
knowledge of man is the beginning of wholeness, but knowledge of God is perfect
wholeness.”
So, as a child, you begin as a whole
thing, then certain functions develop more than others, and you are a part thing
throughout your social, mature working life, and, finally, in the last stage,
you become a whole thing again.
It even seems as if the ego has not been produced by nature to follow its own arbitrary impulses to an unlimited extent, but to help to make real the totality – the whole psyche. It is the ego that serves to light up the entire system, allowing it to become conscious and thus to be realized. M&HS 163
The oneness and wholeness of the personality exists potentially at the
back of the
ego
complex; it is its parent. But insofar as we realize
the Self through a
conscious effort, by
concentrating on our dreams,
it becomes a part of our conscious
personality; in that
form it is like an inner child which now nourishes itself (like the salamander
in the fire of emotion and keeps growing). The awareness of
the importance and activities of the Self increases more and more.
That the Self attracts life from the fire would mean it attracts more and
more libido. AAI 54
You
are never as fully alive as when you are mad. It is a kind of
peak! If you are not mad enough to have experienced that,
then just remember some time when you were absolutely madly in love, or in a mad
rage. What a wonderful state of affairs that is!
Instead of being that broken human being, always fighting between
emotions and reason, you are for once whole! For instance, if
you let out your rage, what a pleasure! “I told that person
everything! I didn’t keep back anything!”
You feel so honest, and whole, for you haven’t been polite, but just said
everything! That is a divine state, absolutely divine, and it
is a divine state to love in that way, where there is no doubt any more.
She – or he – is everything! Divine, complete trust!
No safeguards against the faults of the other fellow human!
None of that distrust that everybody has toward everybody else, but
instead: “We are one! And the stars dance around us!” It is a
state of totality. And the next morning she has a pimple on
her nose, and the whole thing collapses! You are out of the
total state. But emotion creates the experience of being
totally in something, whatever emotion it is, and that is why if one makes
people too normal then they are adapted but do not feel complete any more.
Secretly they long to return to their madness. So it
is no solution. One has to swing back again into the emotion
and try to get the two poles together. The reasonableness and
the emotionality must both be lessened. TPoPA 245
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