“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Today Jane had been reading Experimental Psychology by C. G. Jung, first American edition, published by Jung’s heirs in 1968. We hadn’t asked Seth to comment.)

Let us start with Jung. He presumes that consciousness must be organized about an ego structure. And what he calls the unconscious, not so egotistically organized, he, therefore, considers without consciousness—without consciousness of self. He makes a good point, saying that the normal ego cannot know unconscious material directly. He does not realize, however, nor do your other psychologists, what I have told you often—that there is an inner ego; and it is this inner ego that organizes what Jung would call unconscious material.

All the richly creative original work that is done by this inner self is not unconscious. It is purposeful, highly discriminating, performed by the inner conscious ego of which the exterior ego is but a shadow—and not, you see, the other way around. Jung’s dark side of the self is the ego, not the unconscious. The complicated, infinitely varied, unbelievably rich tapestry of Jung’s “unconscious” could hardly be unconscious. It is the product of an inner consciousness with far more sense of identity and purpose than the daily ego. It is the daily ego’s ignorance and limited focus that makes it view so-called unconscious activity as chaotic.

Now: the inner ego is the organizer of experience that Jung would call unconscious. The inner ego is another term for what we call the inner self. As the outer ego manipulates within the physical environment, so the inner ego or self organizes and manipulates with an inner reality. The inner ego creates that physical reality with which the outer ego then deals.

(Today Jane had been reading Experimental Psychology, by C.G. Jung, first American edition, published by Jung’s heirs in 1968, etc.)

Jung’s dark side of the self is the ego, not the unconscious. The complicated, infinitely varied, unbelievably rich tapestry of Jung’s, in quotes “unconscious,” could hardly be unconscious. [...]

Now let us start with Jung for a bit. [...]

[...] He does not realize however, nor do your other psychologists, what I have told you often—that there is an inner ego; and it is this inner ego that organizes what Jung would call unconscious material.

(Early this month Jane and I bought an anthology containing a long section by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst who died in 1961. Jane hadn’t finished reading this part of the book when Seth suggested, in the 554th session for October 19, that she lay the book aside: “Let Jung go for now.” [...] This wasn’t Jane’s first contact with the writings of Jung by any means.

(It’s interesting to note, however, the way in which Seth “takes off” from material like Jung’s, developing it to include his own ideas and interpretations, as he does in this chapter.

[...] This personification of femaleness in the male is the true meaning of what Jung called the “anima.”

[...] However, the women do not need to be reminded of their femaleness, but again, so that they do not overidentify with their present sex, there is what Jung called the “animus,” or the hidden male within the woman.

Your Freud and Jung have probed into the outer, personal subconscious. Jung saw glimpses of other depths, but that is all. There are rather unfortunate distortions occurring in Jung’s writings, as well as in Freud’s, since they did not understand the primary, cooperative nature of the libido. [...]

[...] Ruburt has been reading Jung, though not consistently. [...]

I was concerned somewhat with Ruburt’s reading of Jung, simply because while he seems to offer more than Freud, in some aspects he has attempted much, and his distortions are fairly important, in that seeming to delve further and offering many significant results, he nevertheless causes insidious conclusions. [...]

Jung feared, basically, such a journey because he felt that it led only to the racial source. [...]

(It will be recalled that in the 83rd session, August 31, 1964, [in Volume 2], Seth commented on the work of Freud and Jung, and mentioned some of the distortions Jung’s work in particular contains.)

(Jane has been reading Jung for the last few days. [...]

Ruburt should learn much of advantage from the book by Jung which he is reading. [...]

[...] She did so but I still did not understand it very clearly, and decided to wait until I could refer to Jung myself.

[...] No sooner had Jane finished with the lengthy James material than she promptly began to get impressions from “Carl Jung.” [...] The words just came to her along with strong emotional feelings that she connected with Jung.

[...] The Jung material felt much more animated, she added, with a lot of vitality and energy to it: “‘He really seemed excitable.” Neither of us found the Jung passages as evocative as the James material, however. [...]

(I’d just begun typing the “James and Jung” material, so from my original notes I read the rest of it to Jane as we waited for Seth to come through. I also thought she discussed an excellent idea of her own, saying that she believed the James-Jung episode itself was an exercise in making the unknown reality known. [...]

[...] The psychologist asked me (deeper and with humor) to comment about Jung. Ruburt felt little correspondence with Jung. [...]

In Seth Speaks, Seth developed Jung’s ideas about the anima and the animus by stating that such other-sex qualities or personifications within each of us actually represent memories of past lives. (Jung himself thought the questions of reincarnation, and of karma [or, roughly, destiny or fate], to be “obscure” — he couldn’t be sure of the existence of such phenomena.) From Session 555 for October 21, 1970: “The anima and the animus … are highly charged psychically, and also appear in the dream state. [...] And from Session 556: “The reality of the anima and the animus is far deeper than Jung supposed. [...]

“I was somewhat concerned with Ruburt’s reading of Jung, simply because while Jung seems to offer more than Freud, in some aspects he has attempted much and his distortions are fairly important: Seeming to delve further and offering many significant results, Jung nevertheless causes conclusions … all the more hampering because of his scope.

[...] Carl Jung (1875–1961), the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, postulated that the unconscious of the male contains a female, archetypal (or typical, instinctive) figure called the “anima”; the correlative male form in the unconscious of the female Jung called the “animus.” [...]

Below, I’ll quote very short passages from sessions 555–56 in Chapter 13 of Seth Speaks, while referring the reader to them at the same time, then present some additional material from the 83rd session that I saved for this note — since in it Seth discussed the theories of both Jung and Jung’s famous teacher, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939).

(Just before the session tonight I wondered aloud what the present Chapter Thirteen would have been like if Jane hadn’t begun to read, early this month, the anthology containing the long section by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst. [...]

(An infusion from Jung cropped up in this chapter, of course — although handled in Seth’s own way. [...]

Now this is a living endeavor, and therefore we take advantage of those happenings in your own lives, and it was I myself who prompted Ruburt to pick up the book (containing Jung) in the first place.

1. Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality contains a number of references to Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who lived from 1875–1961.

Jung was correct in postulating a collective unconscious. [...]

[...] The reality of the anima and the animus is far deeper then than Jung supposed. [...]

Jung’s collective unconscious was an attempt to give your world its psychological roots, but Jung¹ could not perceive the clarity, organization, and deeper context in which that collective unconscious has its own existence. [...]

Most of these are not as symbolic however as Jung thought them to be, though he used a different term, and had only a dim conception of them. [...]

They occur, comparatively speaking, just above that layer which Jung refers to as the collective unconscious. [...]

[...] In one session, Seth discusses Jung’s concept of the unconscious. [...]

And Jung’s so-called “unconscious” is very conscious indeed. [...]

[...] Seth has discussed Freud and Jung to some extent, in the 83rd and 119th sessions, among others.

After tonight’s session, Jane told me that his Practice Element 13 was one of the two she’d had insights on during the night preceding the deleted 717th (James-Jung) session. [...]

(To Florence:) Far be it from me to disturb your ancient ideas of yin and yang, or Jung, or good and evil, or of right and wrong, or of good and bad vibrations! [...]

[...] Most of these are not as symbolic as Jung thought them to be but are literal interpretations of the abilities used by the inner self. [...]