Tantric Techniques (18 page)

From this, it can be seen that there is no question that, for Jung, identification with the ultimate deity would be a horrendous mistake. In his introduction to the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
he suggests that it is only Westerners who would take literally an injunction to

a
Collected Works,
vol. 10, para. 673.

b
Collected Works,
vol. 7, para. 261.

74
Tantric Techniques

identify with the clear light:
a

The soul is assuredly not small, but the radiant Godhead it-self. The West finds this statement either very dangerous, if not downright blasphemous, or else accepts it unthinkingly and then suffers from a theosophical inflation. Somehow we always have a wrong attitude to these things. But if we can master ourselves far enough to refrain from our chief error of always wanting to
do
something with things and put them to practical use, we may perhaps succeed in learning an important lesson from these teachings, or at least in appreciating the greatness of the
Bardo Thödol
, which vouchsafes to the dead man the ultimate and highest truth, that even the gods are the radiance and reflection of our own souls.

It is clear from the presentations of Action yoga given above that, contrary to Jung’s warnings, the injunctions for identification are to be taken literally, to be implemented in practice. For Jung, this would be all the worse unless there were a means for mitigating the problems, which are by no means little:
b

According to the teachings of the
Bardo Thödol,
it is still possible for him, in each of the
Bardo
states, to reach the
Dharmak
ā
ya
by transcending the four-faced Mount Meru, provided that he does not yield to his desire to follow the “dim lights.” This is as much as to say that the individual must desperately resist the dictates of reason, as we understand it, and give up the supremacy of egohood, regarded by reason as sacrosanct. What this means in practice is complete capitulation to the objective powers of the psyche, with all that this entails; a kind of figurative death, corresponding to the Judgment of the Dead in the Sidpa Bardo. It means the end of all conscious, rational, morally responsible conduct of life, and voluntary surrender to what the
Bardo Thödol
calls “karmic illusion.” Karmic illusion springs from belief in a visionary world of an extremely irrational nature, which neither accords with nor derives from our rational judgments but is the exclusive product of

a
Collected Works,
vol. 11, para. 840.

b
Collected Works,
vol. 11, para. 846.

Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation
75

uninhibited imagination. It is sheer dream or “fantasy,” and every well-meaning person will instantly caution us against it; nor indeed can one see at first sight what is the difference between the fantasies of this kind and phantasmagoria of a lunatic.

The problems with identification—loss of essential rationality and perspective—are so great that even the alchemical model of a successful union, in which Jung invested much interest, is for him only suggestive, far from the truth. Although on the one hand he says,
a
“…the alchemist’s endeavour to unite the
corpus mundum
, the purified body, with the soul is also the endeavour of the psychologist once he has succeeded in freeing the ego-conscious from contamination with the unconscious,” he also holds that the aim of such grand transmutation of the collective unconscious is partly an illusion:
b

I hold the view that the alchemist’s hope of conjuring out of matter the philosophical gold, or the panacea, or the wonderful stone, was only in part an illusion, an effect of projection; for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great importance in the psychology of the unconscious. As is shown by the texts and their symbolism, the alchemist projected what I have called the process of individuation into the phenomena of chemical change.

Autonomous complexes.
The theoretical underpinning of Jung’s caution is his estimation, based on experience both with his own quest and with patients, that complexes are autonomous:
c

This points also to the complex and its association material having a remarkable independence in the hierarchy of the psyche, so that one may compare the complex to revolting vassals in an empire.

Though autonomous complexes may and, in fact,
must
be approached, they never come under conscious control:
d

What then, scientifically speaking, is a “feeling-toned

a
Collected Works,
vol. 16, para. 503.
b
Collected Works,
vol. 12, para. 564.
c
Collected Works,
vol. 2, para. 1352.
d
Collected Works,
vol. 8, para. 201.

76
Tantric Techniques

complex”? It is the
image
of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover, incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful inner coherence, it has its own wholeness and, in addition, a relatively high degree of autonomy, so that it is subject to the control of conscious mind to only a limited extent, and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness. The complex can usually be suppressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength.

Autonomous complexes seem even to have their own consciousness:
a

We have to thank the French psychopathologists, Pierre Ja-net in particular, for our knowledge today of the extreme dissociability of consciousness.…These fragments subsist relatively independently of one another and can take another’s place at any time, which means that each fragment possesses a high degree of autonomy.…whether such small psychic fragments as complexes are also capable of a consciousness of their own is a still unanswered question. I must confess that this question has often occupied my thoughts, for complexes behave like Descartes’ devils and seem to delight in playing impish tricks.…As one might ex-pect on theoretical grounds, these impish complexes are unteachable.

They have the character of splinter psyches:
b

But even the soberest formulation of the phenomenology of complexes cannot get round the impressive fact of their autonomy, and the deeper one penetrates into their nature—I might almost say into their biology—the more clearly do they reveal their character as splinter psyches.

And:
c

I have frequently observed that the typical traumatic affect

a
Collected Works,
vol. 8, para. 202.
b
Collected Works,
vol. 8, para. 203.
c
Collected Works,
vol. 16, para. 267.