Totality
… the
mandala which represents the idea of totality.
The centering of the image on hell, which at the same time is
God, is grounded
on the experience that highest and lowest both come from the depths of the soul,
and either bring the frail vessel of
consciousness to shipwreck or carry it
safely to port, with little or no assistance from us. The experience of this
“center” is therefore a
numinous one in its own right.
Magic exercises a compulsion
that prevails over the
conscious mind and will of the victim: an alien will rise
up in the bewitched and proves stronger than his
ego. The only comparable effect
capable of psychological verification is that exerted by the
unconscious
contents, which by their compelling power demonstrate their affinity with or
dependence on man’s totality, that is, the
self and its “karmic” functions. We
have already seen that the alchemical fish symbols points ultimately to an
archetype of the order of magnitude of the
self.
By definition, only absolute totality contains
everything in itself, and neither need nor compulsion attaches it to anything
outside. The is undoubtedly the same as the idea of an absolute
God who
encompasses everything that exists. But which of us can pull himself out of the
bog by his own pigtail? Which of us can improve himself in total isolation? Even
the holy anchorite who lives three days’ journey off in the desert not only
needs to eat and drink but finds himself utterly and terribly dependent on the
ceaseless presence of God. Only absolute totality can renew itself out of itself
and generate itself anew.
On the one hand, in the products of the unconscious
the self appears as it were
a priori, that is, in well-known circle and
quaternity symbols which may already have occurred in the earliest dreams of
childhood, long before there was any possibility of consciousness or
understanding. On the other hand, only patient and painstaking work on the
contents of the unconscious, and the resultant synthesis of conscious and
unconscious data, can lead to a “totality,” which once more uses circle and
quaternity symbols for purposes of self-description.
Cont’d … In this phase, too, the original dreams of childhood are remembered and understood.
Cont’d … The alchemists, who in
their own way knew more about the nature of
the individuation process than we
moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the uroboros, the snake
that bites its own tail.