Young Rocker turned Jung Writer

Book review on

Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life and Teachings

by Gary Lachman (2010)

Reviewed by Martin Lockley , 2010 published in Network Review No 104

The creative Gary Lachman is famous for several reasons. During his early career (1974-1981) in the music business, he was, as his autobiography New York Rocker reveals, a successful musician with Blondie, Iggy Pop and other groups of the "Blank Generation."  Since then he has written a series of intelligent and very engaging books on more or less occult subjects. Three of these are biographies dealing with Rudolf Steiner, Emanuel Swedenborg and P.D. Ouspensky.  I can also recommend A Secret History of Consciousness.

Lachman's latest effort on Carl Jung was well timed to coincide with the release of  the already infamous 'Red Book' the "most significant recent development in Jungian studies" described by Lachman as a sometimes fascinating, sometimes disturbing story of Jung's inner journey to meet "the spirit of the depths."   Jung could, like Swedenborg, enter "waking dreams" - the "active imagination" also described by Steiner. Lachman further suggests that  "Jung vacillated over publishing The Red Book...because the mysticism filling its pages would ruin his shaky scientific standing."   Those who have read Steiner and other similar, occult 'spiritual science' works will know that such active imagination experiences represent spiritual journeys into the domain of the unconscious, which may result in the type of creative products various labeled  'visionary' or what   Lachman  dubs "outsider art."  Lachman gives full credit to Sonu Shamdasani for his painstaking decade of work translating, analysing and interpreting this extraordinary creation and concurs with his conclusion that "Jung's reason for beginning the Red Book was that he had become disillusioned with scientific rationalism."  Jung claimed there was "nothing mystical about the collective unconscious" yet he also characterised mystics as people who have a "particularly vivid experience of the processes of the collective unconscious" - that is experience of actually "assimilating the unconscious."  If this makes one a mystic, it is perhaps only because one is capable of being conscious of the unconscious realm of which most have no awareness.  Those who have proved their ability to tap into this realm (Swedenborg, Steiner, Cayce, Hurkos and others) gain recognition as consciousness gurus or psychics, but always at some cost to their reputations in mainstream society. 

Jung admired his paternal grandfather Carl Jung Sr. who, he liked to believe, 'may have' been the illegitimate son of Wolfgang Goethe. In any event Goethe, represented an ideal "whole" fully individuated personality, and Jung developed a sense that he was split between his real self, a "masterful and commanding character" out of the 18th century, rather than his superficial and at times insecure social 'persona ' - respectively his No. 2 and No. 1 identities.  His mother showed signs of a similar split and his maternal grandfather - the Rev. Samuel Preiswerk - "kept a chair in his study for the ghost of his deceased first wife." It is no wonder Jung became a psychiatrist!

It is helpful to remember that psychology was in its infancy at the turn of the century when Jung (born 1875) was a young adult and contemporary of William James and Rudolf Steiner both of whom were remarkably open to the realities of 'active imagination' and spiritual experience. Like Steiner, Jung wrestled with Kant's assertion that we can never know reality "in-itself" but only as it appears to our senses. Thus, he believed we cannot observe the unconscious mind without our becoming conscious of it. But this is precisely what happened, to change his reality. Such awareness of 'other dimensions of reality ' and his interest in séances and spiritualism  inevitably made Jung "an unhappy medium" at odds with the scientific mainstream. (His doctoral thesis was On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena). 

Lachman covers well-known chapters in Jung's life with efficient ease, touching on his self confessed "polygamous tendencies" and questionable if sometimes effective intimacies with female patients, as well as Mary Moltzer's "inspiration for his idea of the anima." He also recounts the famous meeting with Freud, when the startling 'bangs in the bookshelf' occurred - the second one predicted by Jung.  Freud associated such inexplicable phenomena with the "black tide of mud of occultism," whereas for Jung such "spookery" represented real "exteriorisation phenomena" of a psyche reaching out- of  "attempts of the future personality to break through." He called this a "prospective tendency" - having more to do with "psychosynthesis" than psychoanalysis. Interestingly Freud admitted he found the phenomena compelling when in Jung's presence, though he downplayed and rejected it later. Ironically,  explaining away such phenomena as unreal requires evoking occult complexes (sex in Freud's case)  and falls squarely into what philosopher Paul Ricoeur calls the "hermeneutics of suspicion." Jung for example interpreted sexual themes in mythology as symbolic of spiritual rebirth whereas Freud harped on incest, thereby devaluing the patient with suspicious insinuations.  Jung rightly saw Freud's weakness for "fixed ideas" and putting "personal authority above the truth." William James, who warmed to Jung, had much the same dubious opinion of Freud.

While Freud pioneered transformations in psychological thinking, Jung who did the same also brought about his personal transformation, through his "creative illness" and "a deep reaching interior metamorphosis" characteristic of a midlife turning point (explicitly identified as often occurring between age 35-40). Such transformations reported by other observers like Bucke [Network 72: 18-19] create the proverbial "wounded healer" and moreover are experienced as a transcendent "vital shift in consciousness, brought about by the union of the conscious and unconscious minds."  As Lachman notes the 'collective unconscious' component is equally well characterised, using Jung's alternate term "objective psyche" which implies forces with a powerful psychic life of their own. Developing a relationship with this domain of the psyche is "not without danger" and not for the lazy or faint-hearted.  "Everything good is costly and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things."  But the long term benefit to psychology is that most transformed, self-actualised individuals see the universal value of their experiences and share their rich psychic insights secure in an authentic Gnostic sense of knowing.

In Africa Jung attempted to "re-create the first moment of self consciousness... [when humans]...could first regard the world objectively.." giving it meaning and the "stamp of perfection."  "This is the real act of creation: prior to it no world existed, regardless of any Big Bang or Genesis." (Lachman's italics).  Steiner and his interpreters (Barfield, Welburn and others) are well-versed in the importance of this pivotal turning point in the evolution of consciousness, and so Lachman is correct to point out that Jung misunderstood Steiner's interpretations, on the few occasions he referred to them. This is of little consequence as a century of subsequent research highlights many convergences. For me, the simple fact that we are still making an archeological excavation of consciousness is of paramount importance. Jung understood this and so gave us prescient insight into the role of the unconscious in driving occult impulses from Nazism to UFO sightings.  That a 'young' rocker like Lachman is excavating the Jung archives just proves that our future depends as much on understanding our unconscious past as it does on a high-tech future. Likewise, inner self-transformation (individuation) will change us and our world view more profoundly than our attempts to control, change or manipulate the external world.

(order this book from amazon.co.uk)