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Edward Edinger: Encounters with the Greater Personality - Transcript
Edward Edinger: Encounters with the Greater Personality - Transcript
September 19, 1984 – Presented by the San Diego Friends of Jung
The audio version of this talk is here
The way you can tell [Ego] is drowned is when one lives and functions and speaks in a non-human way. When he’s lost his limited human dimensions. And we all have a good instinct to tell us when we encounter that sort of thing. You don’t have to learn it with your head. An instinct tells you! There’s something that smells bad. When Jung read Nietzsche he knew right away. “It’s morbid.”
Religion Archetype; God-Image Archetype
What I have to say tonight is a logical continuation of my previous subject [4 years earlier about the Book of Job]. It’s the same theme basically, namely:
The Ego’s Encounter with the Self
This is the one basic feature of Jungian Psychology, the Ego and how it relates to the reality of the Self. Jungian Psychology is the only psychological standpoint, which operates out of an awareness that there are two centers in the Psyche. Some other psychologies and analytic approaches, have an awareness that there are two entities in the Psyche, but no other psychological standpoint operates out of the awareness that there are two centers. That is unique to Jungian Psychology.
Since there are two centers, if that comes into conscious realization, then those two centers must collide; they must have an encounter with one another. That’s what happens when the Ego, which is the little center, has an encounter with the Self , which is the big center.
All analysis is no more than a prelude to this experience, the Encounter with the Self. Here’s how Jung put it in his 1925 seminar. “Analysis should release an experience that rips us or falls upon us as from above, an experience that has substance and body, such as those experiences, which happened to the ancients. If I were going to symbolize it, I would choose The Annunciation.”
Now it might very well happen that although this crucial experience, although it is prepared for by analysis, does not take place during the period of analysis at all. It may take place many years after termination of the analysis.
In such a case, one is very grateful for his conscious knowledge of Jungian Psychology. He has a roadmap, so to speak, which helps him get his bearings when this experience falls on him from above. He can say with Job then, “Previously I heard of Thee by the hearing of my ears, but now my eye sees Thee.”
That’s what happens when this experience falls on one. It can also occur without benefit of any analysis at all. It can happen without any particular preoccupation with the Unconscious. For these reasons I consider it vitally important to talk about the Self in public. Because one can never know whether he is speaking to an individual who has had or is going to have the experience I’m talking about. And such an individual may recall what has been spoken about, and find it immensely helpful in his time of need. I know that for a fact that such things do happen.
So, we’re going to be talking the Self tonight. But what is it? As I said, it’s the second center of the Psyche, the Ego being the first. To say a little more about it, one could say that it is the objective center rather than the subjective center. It is the trans-personal center. It’s the center and connector with the totality, which includes both conscious and unconscious. It’s not a theory, it’s a fact. One has to use words to describe a fact, but I assure you what we’re talking about is a fact that is verified by the experience of many people subsequent to analysis.
But the Self is exceedingly difficult to describe. This is because it is a Transcendent entity that is larger than the Ego. That means it cannot be grasped, it cannot be totally embraced by the Ego, and therefore it cannot be defined. What can be defined has to be smaller than the Ego doing the defining. It’s contradictory and paradoxical so far as the Ego’s categories of understanding are concerned.
And, like the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists, it has many different synonyms, which describe different facets of its complex reality. And one of those synonyms, which Jung has proposed, is the Greater Personality. That’s the particular entity I’m going to be talking about tonight. He introduces this term, “Greater Personality,” in his essay “Concerning Rebirth,” in Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 9i. In that place he speaks of Individuation “as a long drawn out process of rebirth into another being.” And concerning that other being he writes:
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“This other being is the other person within ourselves--that larger and Greater Personality maturing within us. It is the inner friend of the Soul. That’s why we take comfort whenever we find that inner friend depicted in a ritual. For example, the friendship between Mithras and the Sun god.
”It’s the representation of a friendship between two men, which is simply the outer reflection of an inner fact. It reveals our relationship to that inner friend of the Soul into whom Nature herself would like to change us. That other person, who we also are, and yet can never attain to completely. We are that pair of diascury, one of whom is mortal, and the other immortal. And who, though always together, can never be made completely one.
“The transformation process strives to approximate them to one another, but our consciousness is aware of resistances, because the other person seems strange and uncanny, and because we cannot get accustomed to the idea that we are not absolute master in our own house. We should always prefer to be ‘I’ and nothing else.”
“But we are confronted with that inner friend or foe, and whether he is our friend or foe depends on our Selves.”
That’s where he first introduces the term “Greater Personality.” But in that same essay he describes the Ego’s encounter with the Greater Personality in these very important words. This is an especially important quotation, in my opinion.
“When the summit of life is reached; when the bud unfolds and from the lesser the greater emerges, then as Nietzsche says, ‘One becomes two.’ And the Greater figure, which one always was, but remained invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of a revelation. He who is truly and hopelessly little, will always drag the revelation of his Greater down to the level of his littleness, and will never understand that the Day of Judgment for his littleness has dawned.
“But the who is inwardly Great knows that the long expected friend of his Soul, the immortal one, has now really come to leap captivity captive. That is, to seek hold of him, by who this immortal had always been confined. Held prisoner; and to make his life flow into that Greater life—the moment of deadliest peril.”
This final phrase comes as a shock after hearing this beautiful description of the Ego’s Encounter with the Greater Personality. We learn only at the very end that the encounter is dangerous, deadly dangerous.
This danger refers to the wounding effect that the Self has on the Ego on first encounter. At the worst, the meeting of Ego and Self can set off an overt psychosis, even at best the Ego’s first decisive meeting with the Self can bring on a painful humiliation and a demoralizing sense of defeat. As Jung puts it in another place, “The experience of the Self is always a defeat for the Ego.”
This experience of wound or defeat is part of what I have spoken of as the Job Archetype. I use that because the story of Job is a particularly apt example of the pattern. The chief features of this pattern are four, and this is going to be the subject of my talk tonight, to give you examples of this pattern, so get these four features:
1. There is an Encounter between the Ego and the Greater Personality, represented as god, angel or superior being of some kind;
2. There is a wound or a suffering of the Ego as a result of this encounter;
3. In spite of the pain, the Ego perseveres and endures the ordeal, and persists in scrutinizing the experience in search of its meaning; and
4. As a consequence of that perseverance, there is Divine Revelation, by which the Ego is rewarded by some insight into the transpersonal Psyche.
So to repeat the four: There’s an encounter; there’s a wounding; there’s perseverance; and there’s revelation.
I’m going to talk about four examples of this theme. The examples vary. Each example emphasizes one particular aspect, and by taking them all together you get a broader picture of the nature of the phenomenon. But each individual who has this experience has it uniquely. So his experience will not be exactly Job’s, it will not be exactly Paul's, it will not be exactly Arjuna’s, it will not be exactly the Apostle Paul’s, and it will not be exactly Nietzsche’s, but having familiarity with various examples of the species will help you when you encounter it for yourself.
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I’m going to talk about 4 tonight, but there are more than that. Quite a list could be culled out of the cultural history of man, but just to give you a brief list here are a few: Jacob and the angel of Yahweh, which I shall talk about; Arjuna’s encounter with Krishna, which I will talk about; Paul’s encounter with Christ; Moses in the Koran’s Al Khidr, which you can find in the 18th Sura of the Koran; Faust’s encounter with Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust; Captain Ahab’s encounter with Moby Dick, in Melville’s work; Nietzche’s encounter with Zarathustra, which I shall talk about; and finally the closest to us of all, Jung’s encounter with Philemon, in his confrontation with the unconscious. I shall confine myself to four: Jacob, Arjuna, Paul, and Nietzsche.
In making this kind of overview, you must forgive the summary way in which I treat each example. It’s really unfair to treat each so briefly, such profound episodes in the cultural history of the human race, but my justification for it is to give you a sense of the Archetype, and I don’t know any better way than to present you briefly with individual examples of the Archetype. That can give you a sense of the underlying general symbolic image that operates within individual variations.
First, Jacob and the angel of Yahweh. This account is found in the 32nd Chapter of Genesis. You will recall that Jacob tricked his brother, Esau, out of his birthright, and then conspiring with his mother, Rebecca, he stole his father’s blessing by fraud--the blessing belonging to Esau. He then had to flee the country to escape his brother’s vengeance. Many years later, having acquired two wives and considerable wealth, the time came when he had to return to the land from which he fled. So he returned to his own country.
But that return meant that he must now meet Esau, brother he had wronged many years previously, and naturally he was afraid. We are always afraid of the person we have wronged. On the night prior to the meeting with Esau, he met the angel of Yahweh at the ford of the River Jabbok. The Jerusalem Bible gives the following account:
“And there was one that wrestled with him until daybreak. Who seeing that he could not master him, struck him in the socket of his hip, and Jacob’s hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him. He said, ‘Let me go for day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’
“He then asked, ‘What is your name?’ ‘Jacob,’ he replied. He said your name shall no longer be Jacob but Israel, because you have been strong against God. You shall prevail against men. And he blessed him there. Jacob named the place Pe-nu-el, because I have seen God face-to-face and have survived. The sun rose as he left Pe-nu-el, limping because of his hip.”
[20:10 of the audio.]
This story contains all four of the features I spoke of. There’s an encounter with a superior being; there’s a wounding; there’s a perseverance; and there’s a divine revelation—in the form of the blessing, first of all, and secondly the investment with a new name. Jacob’s collective identity is revealed, because he now becomes the ancestor of Israel.
What’s particularly interesting psychologically in this example is that an Encounter with the Greater Personality may come at the same time as an encounter with the Shadow. Jacob experienced the encounter with Esau very much as an encounter with God. Esau became a kind of stand in for God for him, because Jacob’s guilty conscience imbues Esau with a kind of divine power. The scripture explicitly says, when Jacob meets Esau he says to him, “I have seen thy face as though I had seen the face of God, so Esau and God overlap.
This means psychologically that the Shadow which one unrelated to may activate the Self, and if one has wronged the Shadow what’s activated is the Self in its avenging aspect. This motif can operate either internally or externally.
If you don’t understand this after I have explained it, please inquire. I want to try to make this clear to everybody.
In an outer external sense, if I commit a wrong against another person, I will fear that person’s desire for revenge. I will know that he’s entitled to revenge because I’ve wronged him. And that condition then constellates the Self. “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” The whole phenomenon of vengeance belongs to the transpersonal center of the Psyche; it belongs to the Self. If an individual has been wronged in any serious way it activates a defensive response from the Self, and if one has set the Self against you, then you are at a sizeable disadvantage. [laughter in audience]
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In a similar way, if I have wronged the Shadow within--if I have violated the inner figure that constitutes my Shadow in some serious way—it’s the violation of totality, which again can arouse the vengeance of the Self against the Ego. All sorts of things may happen then. I may cut myself with an electric saw; or I may have an accident with the car. Anything like that can happen if that constellation has been set up.
What Jacob is obliged to do in this situation is encounter the reaction that has been constellated, endure it without succumbing to defensive hostility or despair. If he succeeds that would correspond with a successful wrestling with the angel. One way of thinking about it might be Jacob had to wrestle with his rage at Esau, before he could arrive at a conciliatory attitude. He did arrive at a conciliatory attitude. He sent gifts, and it worked, but he could not do that until he had overcome his Power reaction. It could have constellated either as rage against Esau for causing him trouble, or with cringing fear of Esau because he knew he had a legitimate complaint against him.
[Reminds me of the time I was confronted with the unexpected arrival home of my girlfriend’s parents, while we were “making out,” and I ran away, with her father shouting at me from the back door, silhouetted against the light of the kitchen. Then I wrestled with my conscience, and had to admit my wrongdoing to her father the next day. In penance, I had to go to a holy-roller service, because they were fundamentalists. That must have occurred in the spring of 1963, and I haven’t thought of it for quite a while!]
Jung makes a very profound observation here. These things are scattered throughout his works. This one is especially important. It can be found in ¶524 of Volume 5 of the Collected Works.
“The god appears at first in hostile form, as an assailant with whom the hero has to wrestle. This is in keeping with the violence of all unconscious dynamism. In this manner the god manifests himself and in this form he must be overcome. The struggle has its parallel in Jacob’s wrestling with the angel at the ford Jabbok. The onslaught of instinct then becomes an experience of divinity, [‘If you really get this you’ve got the main thing.’] provided that man does not succumb to it and follow it blindly, but defends his humanity against the animal nature of the divine power. It is a ‘fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God…” [Who comes to mind?]
What he’s saying there is that intense affects are manifestations of the Greater Personality. One should never take personal responsibility for an intense affect. One doesn’t crank up something like that! It falls out of Heaven, or it roars up from the depths. It’s a manifestation of the Self; any intense affect--the onslaught instinct; and if one can relate to it with that understanding, then it becomes and experience of divinity. This is what was achieved by Jacob’s wrestling with the angel.
Another aspect of such an encounter is mentioned in this remark of Jung’s. This comes from Memories, Dreams, Reflections. He says,
“A contemporary Jacob would find himself willy-nilly in possession of a secret, and would become a deviant from the collectivity.”
This corresponds to the fact that the encounter with the Greater Personality is necessarily a secret. One cannot talk about it; cannot talk about it in its particulars anyway. The secret that both creates the individual as being something separate from the collective, and at the same time is a wound that painfully separates and alienates him from the collective. So it has both a positive and a negative aspect.
A striking example of this phenomenon is the figure in Greek Myth, Philoctetes, who inherited the bow and arrow of Pericles. Pericles was the Greater Personality. Philoctetes was an ordinary person like all of the rest of us. He couldn’t handle these weapons, and he injured himself on one of the poison arrows of Pericles, and it became an incurable wound. The stench was so bad no one could stand to be around him, so he was abandoned on an island.
And yet the time came when an Oracle said that the Trojan War could not be won without the help of Philoctetes, so they had to go back and apologize for ostracizing him, and lure him back into the collectivity, you see. It’s a beautiful example of a certain aspect of the phenomenon. One’s alienated; becomes an objectionable stink to the collective; and yet he’s needed by the collective. [Who could this be in 21st Century America?]
All right I’ll turn to another example. Arjuna and Krishna.
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This is a magnificent example of an Encounter with the Greater Personality, which is recorded in the Bhagavad Gita. Like the Book of Job, its central feature is a dialogue between a grief stricken man and a personification of deity. I have no scholarly knowledge concerning the Gita. I know it’s obviously a composite document, that grew into its present form by a series of accretions, but I think that just considering it psychologically, that it’s not at all impossible that it might have originated, just as I think Job did, in one individual’s actual experience of the Greater Personality.
However, that may be, in its present form, it’s certainly one of the world’s finest examples of this experience. The story begins with the despair of Prince Arjuna before a battle, a battle he does not want to fight, because it’s a battle against his kinsmen. As he expresses his anguish, the god Krishna replies to him through the figure of his chariot driver.
Let me give you just a few brief tastes of this event, with apologies to Robert Johnson, who is expert on this subject. First Arjuna speaks:
“Oh Krishna, seeing these my kinsmen gathered here desirous to fight, my limbs fail me, my mouth is parched, my body shivers, my hair stands on end, my bow slips from my hand, my skin is burning.
“Oh Krishna, I am not able to stand upright. My mind is in a whirl and I see adverse omens. Neither do I see any good in slaying my own people in this strife. I desire neither kingdom nor victory nor pleasures. I do not wish to kill these warriors even though I am killed by them.”
“Krishna replies, ‘Though has been mourning for those who should not be mourned for. These bodies are perishable. The truly wise mourn not for the dead or for the living. The dwellers in these bodies are eternal, indestructible, and impenetrable.
“‘Therefore fight oh descendent of Harada. He considers himself as a slaver, or he who thinks of himself as the slain, neither of these knows the Truth. For he does not slay nor is he slain. This Self is never born, nor does it die, nor does it having been does it go into non-being.
“’What is unborn, eternal, changeless, ancient is never destroyed even when the body is destroyed. Therefore, Arjuna, be resolved to fight. Regarding a life, pleasure, and pain; gain or loss; victory or defeat—fight thou the battle. Thus [inaudible] will not stain me.’”
Characteristically, the Greater Personality has presented an attitude that is too large for the Ego to understand. Arjuna doesn’t understand, because what has been presented to him is an attitude beyond the opposites. In this case, the motif of wounding is represented by his confusion. The wounding is not so prominent in this eastern story as it is in the western story of Job. And that, I think, says something about the difference between eastern and western Psyche.
Anyhow, Arjuna replies:
“Krishna, if to thy mind the path of wisdom is superior to the path of action, then why art thou engaging me in this terrible action? By these seemingly conflicting words thou art bewildering my understanding.” [Thus the wounding.] Therefore tell me with certainty that by one of these I can attain the highest.”
And then Krishna proceeds with what can only be called a very patient explanation. I imagine him beginning with a sigh [laughter]:
“In this world two-fold is the path already described by Me. The path of wisdom is for the meditative, and the path of action is for the active. Man does not attain freedom from action by non-performance of action; nor does he attain perfection merely by giving up action.
“He who restraining the organs of action, sits holding thoughts of sense objects in his mind, that self-deluded one is called a hypocrite. But oh Arjuna, he who controlling the senses of the mind follows without attachment the path of action, with his organs of action, he is esteemed.
“Do though therefore perform right and obligatory actions, for action is superior to inaction. This world is bound by actions, except when they are performed by religious worship. Therefore, oh son of Kunti, do thou perform action without attachment.”
This then is followed by a magnificent description of the religious way of life. And particularly noteworthy is Krishna’s description of his own nature. Now I remind you that from the psychological standpoint, what we are listening to is the Self describing its nature to the Ego. So this is not just a story of a remote event. It’s an account of an experience that can befall any one of us. And here’s how Krishna describes himself, in part, terribly abbreviated:
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“I am the origin and the dissolution of the Universe. [That’s the line that flashed into Robert Oppenheimer’s mind when he witnessed the first atomic explosion—the origin and dissolution of the Universe.] There is naught else existing higher than I. Like pearls on a thread, all of this universe is strung in Me.
“I am the taste in waters and the radiance in the sun and moon; I am the sacred soul, “Ohm” in all the Vedas—sound in the ether; self-consciousness in mankind; I’m the sacred fragrance in the earth and brilliance in fire; I am the life of all beings and austerity in ascetics.
“Know me as the eternal as seat of all beings, the intellect of the intelligent and the prowess of the powerful. Oh Arjuna, I know the past, present, and future of all beings, but no one knows Me.
Now I will remind you that what’s being expressed here is the nature of the Self--what the individual psyche can encounter. This is the way it talks about itself. This is its phenomenology—that the Self, which has as its only available manifestation of consciousness an individual incarnation. Each individual Self, to the extent that it comes into visibility, talks like that.
It has some similarity, the way Krishna describes himself, to the way Yahweh speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. But it is quite different too. You see the whole style is different. It’s much calmer; much more objective. There’s no whirlwind here. One might say more civilized here. It’s more psychological. The west is barbarian psychologically compared to the east.
What Krishna does then is explain to Arjuna, in this calm objective way, the difference between the Ego and the Self, thereby acquainting him with the nature of the Greater Personality. And this revelation happened because, like Job, Arjuna persevered in questioning the Greater Personality [Krishna].
Another example: Paul and Christ. Here again we return to the scriptures in another world religion. The relevant texts are found chiefly in the Book of Acts, and I’m going to read to you a compilation of the essential accounts. I think it’s better to hear it first hand rather than have it summarized. [41:47 of the audio.] This is Paul speaking:
“I once thought it was my duty to use every means to oppose the name of Jesus, the Nazarene. This I did in Jerusalem. I myself threw many of the saints into prison acting on authority from the Chief Priest. And when they were sentenced to death, I cast my vote against them. I often went around to synagogues inflicting penalties--trying in this way to get them to renounce their faith. My fury against them was so extreme that I often pursued them into foreign cities.
“On one such expedition I was going to Damascus armed with full powers and a commission from the Chief Priest. And at mid-day as I was on my way I saw a light bright as the sun come down from Heaven. It shown brilliantly around me and my fellow travelers. We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew,
“Saul Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you kicking like this against the goa.”
“And I said, “Who are you Lord?”
The Lord replied, “I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me. Now get up and stand on your feet, for I have come to you for this reason. To appoint you as my servant, and as witness to this vision, in which you have seen me, and of others in which I shall appear to you. Get up now and go into the city and you will be told what you have to do.”
“The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless, for though they heard the voice they could see no one. Saul got up from the ground, but even with his eyes wide open he could see nothing at all, and they had to lead him into Damascus by the hand. For three days he was without sight and took neither food nor drink.”
Paul was initially absolutely shattered by his encounter with the Greater Personality. He was blind for three days, and according to certain traditions and certain accounts, there’s reason to believe that he had to retreat for three years into Arabia. I think that’s very likely. I think it’s very likely indeed.
Paul’s encounter with the Greater Personality, he identified with Christ, you see, and that’s the origin of the Christian Church, as we know it anyway. May be violently resisted by the conscious Ego, as witness the persecutions of the Christians that Saul engaged in before his vision. This is a psychological phenomenon that is well documented. And certainly in Paul’s case it’s very understandable in view of the fact that the awareness that was brought to him by his encounter with the Greater Personality imposed very rigorous requirements on his life.