inst all this. The rich Catholic imagery and dogma became nothing but 'superstition', and in Jung's view this attitude made way for the barrenness of contemporary life. Genuine spirituality must engage both the unconscious and the conscious mind, the depths as well as the heights.
Jung observed the trend of people in the West flocking to Eastern spirituality, but felt this was hardly necessary given the depth of meaning embedded in the Christian tradition. Another result was that that people are attracted to political and social ideas that were “distinguished by their spiritual bleakness”.
Humans have a religious instinct, Jung believed, whether it is a belief in God or in some secular faith like communism or atheism. “No one can escape the prejudice of being human” he observed.
'Individuation' was Jung's term for the point when a person is finally able to integrate the opposites within them - their conscious and unconscious minds. Individuation simply means to become what you always were in potentia, to fulfil your unique promise. The result is an individual in the real sense of the word, a whole and indestructible self that can no longer be hijacked by splintered aspects or complexes.
But this reintegration does not happen by thinking about it rationally. It is a journey with unexpected twists and turns. Many myths show how we need to follow a path that transcends reason in order to fulfill ourselves in life. Jung went to some length to define the self. He understood it to be something different from the ego; in fact the self incorporated the ego, “just as a large circle encloses a smaller one”. While the ego relates to the conscious mind, the self belongs to the personal and collective unconscious.
The healing mandala
Jung included in Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious many reproductions of mandalas, abstract patterned images whose name in Sanskrit means 'circle'. He believed that when a person draws or paints a mandala, unconscious leanings or wants are expressed in its patterns, symbols and shapes.
In his therapeutic practice, Jung found mandalas to have a 'magical' effect, reducing confusion in the psyche to order, and often affecting a person in ways that only became apparent later. They worked because the unconscious is allowed free reign; what has been swept under comes to the surface. Motifs such as egg shapes, a lotus flower, a star or sun, a snake, castles, cities, eyes, etc. are produced for no obvious reason, yet reflect or draw out processes that are going on deep below that person's conscious thinking. When a person became able to make a meaningful interpretation of the images, Jung observed that it was usually the beginning of psychological healing. It was one step taken in the individuation process.
We think we are modern and civilized with all our technology and knowledge, but inside, Jung says, we are still 'primitives'. He once observed in Switzerland a Strudel, a local witch-doctor, remove a spell from a stable – in the shadow of a railway line on which several trans-European expresses roared by.
Modernity does not do away with the need for us to attend to our unconscious minds. If we do neglect this side of us, the archetypes simply look for new forms of expression, in the process derailing our carefully made plans. Usually the unconscious supports our conscious decisions, but when a gap appears the archetypes are expressed in strange and powerful ways; we can be ambushed by lack of self-knowledge.
The universe of ancient symbols we once used for deciphering life's changes and larger meaning has been replaced by a science – psychology - that was never designed to understand the soul and cater to it. Writing of the scientific mindset in general, Jung wrote: “Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists...But 'the heart glows,' and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being.” Modern man or woman lives with a spiritual emptiness that was once easily filled by religion or mythology. Only a new type of psychology that actually recognized the depth of the psyche would be able t