[MD] Consciousness

[david buchanan]

I think that's right, Gav. Jung's individuation process is about "becoming a total individual" and "this is the journey we are all on". There are some problems with Jung that prevent his work from being totally compatible with the MOQ but he considered any kind of experience to be an empirical fact, a psychological fact, so he was a kind of radical empiricist. In this sense, he rejects positivism and objectivity and he's pretty close in other respects too. Vestiges of SOM and essentialism remain but he's basically a mystic and that's what makes his picture useful in trying to imagine the MOQ. As you put it, Jung thinks "we need to integrate the unconscious elements" and "the ego needs to be integrated within a more complete perspective". In terms of the MOQ, this would be an integration of the small self and the Big Self. To the extent that the unconscious elements remain unconscious, they are projected onto other people and otherwise taken to be an exterior fact. I think this is what Pirsig was talking about when he said the most moral thing to do was absorb bad karma rather than pass it on. This is really just a way of putting all the evil on the other guy rather than recognize it in yourself. Putting an end to at least some of this psychological scape-goating is just one part of the individuation process. I'm sure I don't understand it all. But this journey was already going on long before Jung used these terms. It is on display in the monomyth, as Campbell called it, in the hero's journey. That's why, as you rightly put it, "this process is probably closely related to the christ myth and orpheus too". In both cases, they "die" (ego death), descend into Hell or the Underworld (the unconscious), return to the world of the living with a great treasure (the recovered Big Self, becoming whole) and, having become gods, ascend to heaven or the heavens for eternity (this is always the goal, regardless of the contingencies of time and place). The symbolic language of myth is not to be confused with any claim about supernatural entities or magical happenings. These metaphors refer to psychological events and processes, to experiences of growth and transformation in consciousness. That's what the death and resurrection story is about, not a particular miracle 2000 years ago. In that sense, the resurrection of Christ is not something you believe in, its something you do, something you experience for yourself. Like all mythical heroes, he and Orpheus are symbols of wholeness, of a successful passage through that vital transformational process. We don't have to be tortured to death by the Romans but if the symbolism isn't entirely misleading it will probably involve a few tears, at least.  
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