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object:3.07 - The Ascent of the Soul
book class:The Practice of Psycho therapy
author class:Carl Jung
subject class:Psychology
class:chapter


7
THE ASCENT OF THE SOUL
Here is the division of the four elements/
As from the lifeless corpse the soul ascends.
[Figure 7]
[475]
This picture carries the putrefactio a stage further. Out of the decay
the soul mounts up to heaven. Only one soul departs from the two, for the
two have indeed become one. This brings out the nature of the soul as a
vinculum or ligamentum: it is a function of relationship. As in real death,
the soul departs from the body and returns to its heavenly source. The One
born of the two represents the metamorphosis of both, though it is not yet
fully developed and is still a conception only. Yet, contrary to the usual
meaning of conception, the soul does not come down to animate the body,
but leaves the body and mounts heavenwards. The soul evidently
represents the idea of unity which has still to become a concrete fact and is
at present only a potentiality. The idea of a wholeness made up of sponsus
and sponsa has its correlate in the rotundus globus coelestis.
1
[476]
This picture corresponds psychologically to a dark state of
disorientation. The decomposition of the elements indicates dissociation
and the collapse of the existing ego-consciousness. It is closely analogous
to the schizophrenic state, and it should be taken very seriously because
this is the moment when latent psychoses may become acute, i.e., when the
patient becomes aware of the collective unconscious and the psychic non-
ego. This collapse and disorientation of consciousness may last a
considerable time and it is one of the most difficult transitions the analyst
has to deal with, demanding the greatest patience, courage, and faith on the
part of both doctor and patient. It is a sign that the patient is being driven
along willy-nilly without any sense of direction, that, in the truest sense of
the word, he is in an utterly soulless condition, exposed to the full force of
autoerotic affects and fantasies. Referring to this state of deadly darkness,
one alchemist says: Hoc est ergo magnum signum, in cuius investigatione
nonnulli perierunt (This is a great sign, in the investigation of which not a
few have perished).
2[477]
This critical state, when the conscious mind is liable to be submerged
at any moment in the unconscious, is akin to the loss of soul that
frequently attacks primitives. It is a sudden abaissement du niveau mental,
a slackening of the conscious tension, to which primitive man is especially
prone because his consciousness is still relatively weak and means a
considerable effort for him. Hence his lack of will-power, his inability to
concentrate and the fact that, mentally, he tires so easily, as I have
experienced to my cost during palavers. The widespread practice of yoga
and dhyana in the East is a similar abaissement deliberately induced for
the purpose of relaxation, a technique for releasing the soul. With certain
patients, I have even been able to establish the existence of subjectively
experienced levitations in moments of extreme derangement. Lying in
bed, the patients felt that they were floating horizontally in the air a few
feet above their bodies. This is a suggestive reminder of the phenomenon
called the witchs trance, and also of the parapsychic levitations reported
of many saints.
3
[478]
The corpse in our picture is the residue of the past and represents the
man who is no more, who is destined to decay. The torments which form
part of the alchemists procedure belong to this stage of the iterum mori
the reiterated death. They consist in membra secare, arctius sequestrare ac
partes mortificare et in naturam, quae in eo [lapide] est, vertere (cutting
up the limbs, dividing them into smaller and smaller pieces, mortifying the
parts, and changing them into the nature which is in [the stone]), as the
Rosarium says, quoting from Hermes. The passage continues: You must
guard the water and fire dwelling in the arcane substance and contain those
waters with the permanent water, even though this be no water, but the
fiery form of the true water. For the precious substance, the soul, is in
danger of escaping from the bubbling solution in which the elements are
decomposed. This precious substance is a paradoxical composite of fire
and water, i.e., Mercurius, the servus or cervus fugitivus who is ever about
to fleeor who, in other words, resists integration (into consciousness).
He has to be contained by the water, whose paradoxical nature
corresponds to the nature of Mercurius and actually contains him within
itself. Here we seem to have a hint about the treatment required: faced with
the disorientation of the patient, the doctor must hold fast to his own
orientation; that is, he must know what the patients condition means, he
must understand what is of value in the dreams, and do so moreover with
4the help of that aqua doctrinae which alone is appropriate to the nature of
the unconscious. In other words, he must approach his task with views and
ideas capable of grasping unconscious symbolism. Intellectual or
supposedly scientific theories are not adequate to the nature of the
unconscious, because they make use of a terminology which has not the
slightest affinity with its pregnant symbolism. The waters must be drawn
together and held fast by the one water, by the forma ignea verae aquae.
The kind of approach that makes this possible must therefore be plastic
and symbolical, and itself the outcome of personal experience with
unconscious contents. It should not stray too far in the direction of abstract
intellectualism; hence we are best advised to remain within the framework
of traditional mythology, which has already proved comprehensive enough
for all practical purposes. This does not preclude the satisfaction of
theoretical requirements, but these should be reserved for the private use of
the doctor.Figure 7
[479]
Therapy aims at streng thening the conscious mind, and whenever
possible I try to rouse the patient to mental activity and get him to subdue
the massa confusa of his mind with his own understanding, so that he can
reach a vantage-point au-dessus de la mle. Nobody who ever had any
wits is in danger of losing them in the process, though there are people
who never knew till then what their wits are for. In such a situation,
understanding acts like a life-saver. It integrates the unconscious, and
gradually there comes into being a higher point of view where both
conscious and unconscious are represented. It then proves that the invasion
by the unconscious was rather like the flooding of the Nile: it increases the
fertility of the land. The panegyric addressed by the Rosarium to this state
5is to be taken in that sense: O natura benedicta et benedicta est tua
operatio, quia de imperfecto facis perfectum cum vera putrefactione quae
est nigra et obscura. Postea facis germinare novas res et diversas, cum tua
viriditate facis diversos colores apparere. (O blessed Nature, blessed are
thy works, for that thou makest the imperfect to be perfect through the true
putrefaction, which is dark and black. Afterwards thou makest new and
multitudinous things to grow, causing with thy verdure the many colours
to appear.) It is not immediately apparent why this dark state deserves
special praise, since the nigredo is universally held to be of a sombre and
melancholy humour reminiscent of death and the grave. But the fact that
medieval alchemy had connections with the mysticism of the age, or rather
was itself a form of mysticism, allows us to adduce as a parallel to the
nigredo the writings of St. John of the Cross concerning the dark night.
This author conceives the spiritual night of the soul as a supremely
positive state, in which the invisible and therefore darkradiance of
God comes to pierce and purify the soul.
6
7
[480]
The appearance of the colours in the alchemical vessel, the so-called
cauda pavonis, denotes the spring, the renewal of lifepost tenebras lux.
The text continues: This blackness is called earth. The Mercurius in
whom the sun drowns is an earth-spirit, a Deus terrenus, as the alchemists
say, or the Sapi entia Dei which took on body and substance in the creature
by creating it. The unconscious is the spirit of chthonic nature and contains
the archetypal images of the Sapientia Dei. But the intellect of modern
civilized man has strayed too far in the world of consciousness, so that it
received a violent shock when it suddenly beheld the face of its mother,
the earth.
8
[481]
The fact that the soul is depicted as a homunculus in our picture
indicates that it is on the way to becoming the filius regius, the undivided
and hermaphroditic First Man, the Anthropos. Originally he fell into the
clutches of Physis, but now he rises again, freed from the prison of the
mortal body. He is caught up in a kind of ascension, and, according to the
Tabula smaragdina, unites himself with the upper powers. He is the
essence of the lower power which, like the third filiation in the
doctrine of Basilides, is ever striving upwards from the depths, not with
the intention of staying in heaven, but solely in order to reappear on earth
as a healing force, as an agent of immortality and perfection, as a mediator
9and saviour. The connection with the Christian idea of the Second Coming
is unmistakable.
[482]
The psychological interpretation of this process leads into regions of
inner experience which defy our powers of scientific description, however
unprejudiced or even ruthless we may be. At this point, unpalatable as it is
to the scientific temperament, the idea of mystery forces itself upon the
mind of the inquirer, not as a cloak for ignorance but as an admission of
his inability to translate what he knows into the everyday speech of the
intellect. I must therefore content myself with a bare mention of the
archetype which is inwardly experienced at this stage, namely the birth of
the divine child orin the language of the mystics the inner man.




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