Jung Was Not a Mystic, and Jungianism Is Not Mysticism

Laura London: And it’s important to look at [Wolfgang] Pauli’s dreams because you mention that creative discoveries are usually preceded by the processes appearing in dreams.

Gary Sparks: That’s a whole nother discussion right there. One of the things he tried to do – I’m taking that question and making it a little more specific – the idea that we’re dealing with here is “Is there a way to live that is not based on imposing our will on somebody else?” Technology is basically about imposing our will on matter. And he was interested in seeing is there a way we can live without imposing the will. I think what his dreams are articulating is the critical importance of doing that.

LL: You said that our way of looking at things is going to go through another development.

GS: Yeah, I think it has to. We’ve got to find another way to live, other than the imposition of will; the imposition of will over matter or nature.

LL: And that science and spirituality are going to have to come together. The unconscious says that they’re the same, and that’s where we get stuck. What do you mean by that?

GS: Well, for example Pauli dreamt of going into his lab and a mass was being conducted. Or going into a church and the priest was doing a scientific experiment. In the unconscious there’s no difference between science and religion. I think for me the answer has to do with symbolic living.

The error is thinking that science is a linear, logical process on the scientific side; and on the religious side, that it’s a metaphysical experience beyond rational critiquing. But what Pauli showed, getting back to your earlier question as well, scientific ideas start with an image. He wrote an essay trying to show how some of his theories came out of dream images. So that the symbolic life can be seen at the foundation of science. And a genuine religious life is not belief, but it’s religious experience, based on images that appear within the psyche. So that giving up the idea of science as rational and that religion is metaphysically unarguable, both have to change for the adoption of the symbolic life.

LL: You said that Pauli had a foot in both worlds. Would you say that the same was true of Jung?

GS: Yes, definitely. More toward the end of his life, I think. As I mentioned he would necessarily have devoted his attention to the psyche. At the end of his life... you now they have that tower down in Bollingen? He added the tower, the highest point in the structure, because he realized he hadn’t given enough credence to the ego. He worked intensely on the inner world and then, toward the end of his life, realized the crucial point is how that relates to the outer world. But he needed to focus on the inner world because that was where his research could bear the most fruit, but then toward the end of his life, as I mentioned in that quote of von Franz, said, “Now, how does that relate to the outside material world?”

LL: One of Pauli’s dreams that you look at in your book is his dream of the world clock. You say that the dream was trying to show Pauli that he could not understand life without accepting it’s complexities. .

GS: There’s a [heart] and a vision in the dream of a clock which is on a horizontal plane, and there’s a clock which is on a vertical plane, and they intersect… I think the two are resting on the back of a bird. The Greeks had that all figured out, and we’ve forgotten it, but I think Pauli was dreaming of it. Time has both a qualitative and a quantitative aspect. We’ve lost the idea of the qualitative aspect. That’s what a synchronicity is. And the complexity is revealing we have to both have our feet firmly in time and space; deal with the problems that we’re facing, deal with emotions, deal with conflict. Deal with rage, lust, problems, conflicts. On the one hand that is the horizontal clock. And yet there is a timeless dimension of that, which is the vertical clock would represent.

There are qualitative moments in our life which, if we don’t understand them, we will lose the meaning of everything that happens in that horizontal circle. And the art of living is living with the knowledge of the importance of time and space, and also what transcends time and space.

LL: You said of that dream, “It has been suggested that Pauli looked very closely at the events of his life, and took responsibility for his role in them. This is what ego development is about; absorbing behavior and taking responsibility for it.”

GS: That’s the horizontal clock. That’s why Jung was not a mystic. You know; paying rent, paying mortgages, getting your car fixed, arguing with the car mechanic. As Jung said, I wonder what Christianity would be like if Jesus had three kids to put through college? All of that is very important. It’s only when we are living responsibly to those demands that spirituality really can reach it’s full extent.

LL: And that dream of Pauli’s that we were just speaking of, the one of the world clock, is in a section of the book called “Dual Mandala”.

GS: Yes.

LL: You said, “A dual mandala is a living image which portrays that a single life is made up of two parts: the here and now, and something else.”

GS: Yeah, that something else is that vertical clock. It’s those kairos moments in which we are guided toward our own development, in a way which we cannot rationally understand. Until we can recognize the tension between the two – or similarity between the two – the synching between X, Y, and Z, between the two, we’re only living half a story. Or a very split story.

  - Speaking of Jung, Episode #2: J. Gary Sparks,  38:22 (Laura London)