Tantric Techniques (19 page)

Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation
77

is represented in dreams as a wild and dangerous animal—a striking illustration of its autonomous nature when split off from consciousness.

Furthermore, since autonomous complexes are the very structure of even normal psychic life, they remain autonomous and cannot be fully assimilated:
a

I am inclined to think that autonomous complexes are among the normal phenomena of life and that they make up the structure of the unconscious psyche.

For Jung, it seems that almost everything is an autonomous complex. The soul is an autonomous complex:
b

Looked at historically, the soul, that many-faceted and much-interpreted concept, refers to a psychological content that must possess a certain measure of autonomy with-in the limits of consciousness. If this were not so, man would never have hit on the idea of attributing an independent existence to the soul, as though it were some objectively perceptible thing. It must be a content in which spontaneity is inherent, and hence also partial unconsciousness, as with every autonomous complex.

Objects of an ordinary consciousness are autonomous complexes, overvalued with psychic force, and religion seeks to collect back the libido that has been over-invested in the external:
c

To be like a child means to possess a treasury of accumulated libido which can constantly stream forth. The libido of the child flows into things; in this way he gains the world, then by degrees loses himself in the world (to use the language of religion) through a gradual overvaluation of things. The growing dependence on things entails the necessity of sacrifice, that is, withdrawal of libido, the severance of ties. The intuitive teachings of religion seek by this means to gather the energy together again; indeed, religion portrays this process of re-collection in its symbols.

a
Collected Works,
vol. 8, para. 218.
b
Collected Works,
vol. 6, para. 419.
c
Collected Works,
vol. 6, para. 422.

78
Tantric Techniques

Even when this overvaluation is withdrawn, God (or let us substi-tute the mind of clear light or ultimate deity) becomes an autonomous complex:
a

If the ‘soul’ is a personification of unconscious contents, then, according to our previous definition, God too is an unconscious content, a personification in so far as he is thought of as personal, and an image of expression of something in so far as he is thought of as dynamic. God and the soul are essentially the same when regarded as personifica-tions of an unconscious content. Meister Eckhart’s view, therefore, is purely psychological. So long as the soul, he says, is not only in God, she is not blissful. If by “blissful” one understands a state of intense vitality, it follows from the passage quoted earlier that this state does not exist so long as the dynamic principle “God,” the libido, is projected upon objects. For, so long as God, the highest value, is not in the soul, it is somewhere outside. God must be withdrawn from objects and brought into the soul, and this is a “higher state” in which God himself is “blissful.” Psychologically, this means that when the libido invested in God, that is, the surplus value that has been projected, is recognized as a projection, the object loses its overpowering significance, and the surplus value consequently accrues to the individual, giving rise to a feeling of intense vitality, a new potential. God, life at its most intense, then resides in the soul, in the unconscious. But this does not mean that God has become completely unconscious in the sense that all idea of him vanishes from consciousness. It is as though the supreme value were shifted elsewhere, so that it is now found inside and not outside. Objects are no longer autonomous factors, but God has become an autonomous psychic complex. An autonomous complex, however, is al-ways only partially conscious, since it is associated with the ego only in limited degree, and never to such an extent that the ego could wholly comprehend it, in which case it would no longer be autonomous.

Even the ego, the mediator, is an autonomous complex:
b

a
Collected Works,
vol. 6, para. 421.

b
Collected Works,
vol. 2, para. 1352.

Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation
79

Researches have shown that this independence is based upon an intense emotional tone, that is upon the value of the affective elements of the complex, because the ‘affect’ occupies in the constitution of the psyche a very independent place, and may easily break through the self-control and self-intention of the individual.…For this property of the complex I have introduced the term
autonomy
. I conceive the complex to be a collection of imaginings, which, in consequence of this autonomy, is relatively independent of the central control of the consciousness, and at any mo-ment liable to bend or cross the intentions of the individual. In so far as the meaning of the ego is psychologically nothing but a complex of imaginings held together and fixed by the coenesthetic impressions, also since its intentions or innervations are
eo ipso
stronger than those of the secondary complex (for they are disturbed by them), the complex of the ego may well be set parallel with and compared to the secondary autonomous complex.

Remarks

As we have seen, Jung’s estimation of the nature of the mind does not allow for complete transformation; it is of the nature of the mind for elements to remain unconsciously imbedded in its framework, assimilatable into consciousness only in the sense of the ego’s confronting them and then only in a never-ending, piecemeal way. We can speculate that, for him, identification with an ideal being—a deity—would exalt to the grandiose level of a systematic religious practice the self-inculcation of inflation and all its attendant ills. Having lost respect for and a critical attitude toward unconscious contents and their powerful influence on mental life, one would have pretentiously assimilated too much to the ego in “positive inflation,” and also, due to denying the powerful autonomous contents that can wreak havoc with those who neglect them, one would eventually be overpowered by those autonomous contents— drowned in the larger self in “negative inflation.”

The ideal being as whom the practitioner would be masquerad-ing would be unable to negotiate between the needs of unconscious contents to manifest and the imperative of effective individuation, drowned in a sea of a pretension of grand, merely public affecta-tions of compassion, love, generosity, and so forth. Self-hypnotized,

80
Tantric Techniques

closed to criticism, bloated from feeling that the very structure of pure reality is his or her own basic nature, the practitioner would lose the faculty of discrimination, the essence of a healthy psychological life. The basic problem would be the failure to recognize that since the structure of the psyche is to be found in autonomous complexes—ranging from unconscious contents in the personal unconscious, to those in the collective unconscious, to the ego it-self—the primary need is to learn that these autonomous factors need to be negotiated; nothing could be worse than a pretension of grandiose control.

Possible amelioration of autonomous complexes in deity yoga

Jung’s cautions are based on considerable therapeutic experience, and it should be clear that I not only do not take them lightly but am considerably impressed with his insights. Still, several provoca-tive questions can be raised in light of the description of deity yoga in Action Tantra:

1. The use of rationality in the initial step, the ultimate deity, to penetrate the appearance of objects as if they inherently exist or exist under their power suggests that recognition and realization of emptiness, even in a nondual manner, is not a surrender to irrationality but to be done only by a highly discriminative mind. It is likely that emptiness yoga—which is aimed at overcoming the sense that phenomena, mental and otherwise, exist under their own power, autonomously—could de-autonomize complexes.
   

2. Much as Jung emphasizes not just the appearance of feeling-toned complexes to the conscious mind but also the conscious mind’s adopting a posture of confrontation, the Buddhist division of the mind of deity yoga into an appearance factor appearing as an ideal being and an ascertainment factor realizing emptiness suggests how discrimination is maintained in the face of a profoundly different type of appearance—in this case an ideal being—despite identification with that appearance. Identification has assumed a different meaning, for the meditator merely is identifying himself or herself as that pure person designated in dependence upon purely appearing mind and body and not findable either among or separate from mind and body.
   

   Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation
   81
   

   

3. Admittedly, the assumption of ultimate pride—the recognition that the deity’s final nature and one’s own are the same—may be a compensation for the negative inflation of being overly absorbed in emptiness and thus may be an expression of positive inflation. However, it is likely that identifying that one’s final nature is an absence of inherent, or autonomous, existence and that this emptiness is compatible with dependently arisen appearances counteracts positive inflation. Also, even though the final nature of a person is his or her emptiness of inherent existence, a person is not his or her emptiness of inherent existence. Similarly, even though the fundamental innate mind of clear light taught in Highest Yoga Mantra is the final basis of designation of a person, since a person is not his or her basis of designation, a person is not his or her fundamental innate mind of clear light. Furthermore, the fundamental innate mind of clear light is individual to each person. Hence, the meditation is neither that one is ultimate reality in general or the fundamental innate mind of clear light in general.
   

4. Just as Jung emphasizes the virtues of attention, conscientiousness, and patience as countermeasures to negative inflation— identified as too great absorption in the deeper self—so the compassionately active emanations at the point of the form de-ity in Action Tantra meditation establish altruism as the basic motivation and inner structure of individuation, reappearance in ideally compassionate form, thereby establishing this practice as highly moral. The practice of transmuting depraved and deprived contents under the guise of quasi-otherness and the continuous recognition of the emptiness of inherent existence may provide a means for “teaching” even what Jung calls “im-pish” complexes despite his claim of their unteachability.
   

5. Though I have found no doctrinal injunctions corresponding to Jung’s call for more than public virtues, specifically for a connection with one’s own earthy self, the biographies of masters emphasize personalized feelings and reactions.
   a
   Also, I have