Revisioning Individuation

This confusion arises because Jung saw individuation as making ‘unconscious contents’ conscious. In other words, translating the unconscious into a ‘rational’ understanding whereby the ego could ‘control’ the psyche. Following from above we could say that Jung retranslated mythic translations of the archetypes into conscious, rational translations. Spiritual practice on the other hand involves surrendering the ego and rationality to the higher levels of consciousness, allowing the ego and rationality to be transcended and included in a higher order. It involves retranslating rational translations of the archetypes into higher translations yet again, until the archetypes are experienced in their causal purity and finally dissolved into Emptiness.

Again we return to the pre/trans fallacy, where the assumption is made that the invasion of the conscious mind, the ego, by prepersonal contents and transpersonal contents alike is seen as the same, a kind of psychosis. This arises because of the inability to distinguish between the ‘pre’ aspects of the archetypes calling for integration, and the ‘trans’ aspects calling for transformation.

Part of this is due to a legitimate fear. If the ego is not strong enough, immersion into the transpersonal realms can destabilise the psyche, especially when some archetypes remain in a primitive, repressed state. James Hillman says:

“For any attempt at self-realisation with out full recognition of the psychopathology that resides, as Hegel said, inherently in the soul is in itself pathological, an exercise in self deception. Such self-realisation turns out to be a paranoid delusional system, or even a kind of charlatanism, the psychopathic behaviour of an emptied soul.”[22]

But this is no excuse for throwing the baby out with the bathwater, (as Hillman’s ‘Archetypal’ school seems to do). To hold the individuation process at the ‘centaur’ level is itself a form of repression. What Wilber teaches the Jungians is that individuation is the Atman Project and that it proceeds right up to authentic Nondual Self-realisation. It is not enough for the ‘ego’ to be made conscious of the various unconscious contents as they arise. The ‘ego’ itself must be transcended and included.

Therefore and Integral approach to individuation has true ‘Self’ realisation as its final goal.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE SELF – A META-ARCHETYPE

The ‘Self’ is perhaps the most complex of Jung’s concepts and therefore the most difficult to understand. On one level it is ‘the’ archetype of order. On another it is “not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both consciousness and unconsciousness”.[23] The Self is our potential, our omega point, but it also has a definite structure.