'Reality contains everything I can know, for everything that acts upon me is real and actual… Unless, of course, it should occur to someone to limit the concept of reality in such a way that the attribute "real" applied only to a particular segment of the world's reality…
'Restriction to material reality carves an exceedingly large chunk out of reality as a whole, but it nevertheless remains a fragment only, and all round it is a dark penumbra which one would have to call unreal…
'[C]onsciousness has no direct relation to any material objects. We perceive nothing but images, transmitted to us indirectly by a complicated nervous apparatus. Between the nerve-endings of the sense-organs and the image that appears in consciousness, there is interpolated an unconscious process which transforms the physical fact of light, for example, into the psychic image "light." But for this complicated and unconscious process of transformation consciousness could not perceive anything material.
'The consequence of this is, that what appears to us as immediate reality consists of carefully processed images, and that, furthermore, we live immediately only in a world of images…
'Far, therefore, from being a material world, this is a psychic world, which allows us to make only indirect and hypothetical inferences about the real nature of matter. The psychic alone has immediate reality, and this includes all forms of the psychic, even "unreal" ideas and thoughts which refer to nothing "external." We may call them "imagination" or "delusion," but that does not detract in any way from their effectiveness…
'Our much vaunted reason and our boundlessly overestimated will are sometimes utterly powerless in the face of "unreal" thoughts. The world-powers that rule over all mankind, for good or ill, are unconscious psychic factors, and it is they that bring consciousness into being... We are steeped in a world that was created by our own psyche.
'From this we can judge the magnitude of the error which our Western consciousness commits when it allows the psyche only a reality derived from physical causes. The East is wiser, for it finds the essence of all things grounded in the psyche. Between the unknown essences of spirit and matter stands … psychic reality, the only reality we can experience immediately.’
—Carl Jung, The Real and the Surreal
Jung reminds us the reality we live in is shaped, above all, by the mind. Thus, it is wise to take our internal experiences at least as seriously as we take events and objects in the world ‘outside’.
I invite you to reflect on what images and narratives your mind most often drifts into. What do you think this says about those hidden wounds and yearnings just beneath the threshold of your consciousness? And is there a way to be present for these wounds and yearnings? Is there away to make them feel seen and heard?
May we listen with patience,
Simeon
Carl Jung & Buddhism on the Unconscious
Explore the fascinating intersection of Jungian psychology and Buddhism as we dive into the nature of the unconscious. From Carl Jung's concept of the collective unconscious to the Buddha's teachings on non-self, this video uncovers how these two wisdom traditions illuminate the unseen layers of our psyche.