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Active Imagination and Jung


Faemon

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So, most of us get knocked out for a good chunk of a 24-hour day, hallucinate vividly, then (usually) get a dose of amnesia about it. This is healthy.

 

What this pioneer in psychology, Carl Jung, considered even healthier was if we could remember the dreams and sort of negotiate with them as symbols of our subconscious and unlock the wellspring of individual creativity.

 

As lucid dreaming hadn't been proven to exist yet, Jung expanded dream interpretation into a method of visualization and imagination that took a cue from the dreaming state of mind, and from there he would analyze the significance of object, events, and characters of the world in his mind. These imaginings would often become their own experience, neither dreams during sleeping nor necessarily something in waking reality, so this method of Active Imagination is described very much like a Wonderland.

 

Through this method, Jung made the acquaintance of a character that he identified as Philemon. The name is taken from the Greek myth of Philemon and Baucis, poor peasants who entertained Zeus when the god was disguised as a beggar. In the myth, Zeus rewarded the couple for their hospitality by offering to grant them each a wish. One wished only that their humble house be transformed into a temple so that they would continue to serve the gods, and the other wished that they would die at the same time because the couple loved each other that much. (D'aww.)

 

I personally believe that this Philemon figure to Jung became as a sort of tulpa, because Jung described walking in his waking-life garden and conversing with Philemon as if Philemon were a person.

 

Rather than taking the mythology as something metaphysical, as Jung perhaps channeling the ghost of some long-dead Ancient Greek peasant-cleric man, we could consider the myth as inspiration for the figure, much like the influence and inspirational quality of fiction can be in modern times.

 

 

 

Any fans of Jung out there, please do feel free to weigh in in regards to archetypes, alchemy, and anything else from this school of thought and/or its branches that could assist in the making of tulpas. Or personal experiences as interpreted through a Jungian-influenced self-analysis.

 

(...Or criticisms about how Jungian psychology/philosophy is only of any value to woo-woo New Agers because he was secretly crazier than any of his patients, that'll fit right in here too.)

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Jung is one ring higher on the ladder than Freud, and Jung got a lot right and did a whole lot more good and fascinating research and had better ideas than "a giant novelty candy came is never just a giant novelty candy cane". I've looked into him quite a bit, mostly in the dream department during the period when I was learning how exactly I could lucid dream. I'm not entirely confident in all of his thinking, but I don't think he's too much of a woo-woo New Ager, considering the fact that he actually did some significant things for that school of thought and psychology in general. Again, I'm not an expert or by any means qualified or confident in my knowledge enough to say something else, but I'd like to know what others have to say about this.

[align=center]Even though my username is that of my tulpa, Quilten, my name is Phaneron, the host, who does all of the actual posting.

Tulpas: Quilten, Jira

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Is there really something so wrong about reading and sharing the information and ideas, applying it to a possibly-transferable skill? I wouldn't consider that conducive to constructive or interesting discussions, if so.

 

Nothing wrong with gathering knowledge. It's just the presumption that barely anyone is trying to be serious with tulpas in general is what was interesting to me. Guess the book has something that will change the paradigm of assessing things. If the amount of books read translates to a serious tulpaforcer, then I guess I'm just a lame host in general, but oh well.

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I'm not an expert or by any means qualified or confident in my knowledge enough to say something else, but I'd like to know what others have to say about this.

 

Chupi, thanks for the link! That thread's definitely important to consider, but I wanted to be more inclusive in this thread than The One Book To Rule Them All, hence the inclusion of archetypes and alchemy. And personal experience--So, Quilten, I honor you as an expert in your own experience, and if Jung grants any helpful frame or structure to express that, I wouldn't get too pedantic about it.

 

Guess the book has something that will change the paradigm of assessing things. If the amount of books read translates to a serious tulpaforcer, then I guess I'm just a lame host in general, but oh well.

 

Yes, it offers a fascinating (in my opinion) paradigm of assessing things. If a mere two people sharing one reference automatically becomes a "delusion of grandeur" that you'd prefer to outwardly dismiss the entire premise out of hand, then I'll naturally have a difficult time considering your advice to cool our jets on presumptions of others' validity/dedication. It would be good advice were the challenge to examine that base assumption ("tulpamancers aren't serious") to come from someone less evidently eager to project their own complexes onto others.

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Yes, it offers a fascinating (in my opinion) paradigm of assessing things. If a mere two people sharing one reference automatically becomes a "delusion of grandeur" that you'd prefer to outwardly dismiss the entire premise out of hand, then I'll naturally have a difficult time considering your advice to cool our jets on presumptions of others' validity/dedication. It would be good advice were the challenge to examine that base assumption ("tulpamancers aren't serious") to come from someone less evidently eager to project their own complexes onto others.

 

I wasn't referring to you as upholding said grandiose delusions, and I apologize if that seems to be the case. The only thing that was peculiar to me is referencing one book as a testament that one is serious in an endeavor, and using only that and a few references to sustain that mentality. This isn't censoring group thinking on my end, this is only pointing out the ego trip of those who feel they're the only ones that are serious, and are engaging in some kind of deep, mysticism inquiry that only belongs to elitists.

 

It never really crossed my mind as you being in that camp, but merely me making a general statement of how people undermine others while they feel they're king of the hills, is all that I was referring to. We can revel in self-aggrandizing presumptions all we want until people start undermining the community as not being serious compared to said individual feeling they were the only ones who were serious up until awareness of others who had akin interests and knowledge of something they felt hold true as an indicator of earnest devotion to tulpas.

 

The concern was just the undermining of the community; for one to make a general consensus on the community's competency in general solely from what they read seems a bit unfair, and seems to a hasty generalization as well. Kind of like how people generalize the audience of the community as younger individuals with no potential for self-betterment that they feel would only belong to older people, i.e., ageism. I never suggested to anyone to cool their jets, nor do I see any means for anyone to consider one's person's advice as absolute law in the first place.

 

 

All I made in the previous post was making a statement of interest of what was going on. Though I guess it's hard to be casual in the forums if people feel I'm trying to calm people down, so this must be my wording that gives that implication of an intention that I'm not actively seeking to uphold. Forgive me; I'll just leave the conversation unless I can be on topic then.

 

 

TL;DR:

 

I'm not stopping internet high-fives, I was only stating a curiosity of a hasty generalization of what it means to be "serious" to the point where individuals feel the community isn't serious unless they have akin interests that makes them feel like special snowflakes. Jung's mysticism and collective unconscious theories, especially with dreams are interesting, but using a reference that a person read it or not as an indicator for earnest devotion to tulpas seems farfetched. I wasn't dismissing theories, or anything of that nature, just referencing an example of hasty generalization of what it means to be serious based on what knowledge and information a person has acquired.

 

It's one thing to just acknowledge akin interests, discoveries, information, and knowledge, but it's another where that same repository of information is considered to be the sole factor, or one of few factors of how serious a person is in an endeavor. It seems doing that (the cherry-picking) dismisses discussion with others who didn't get the chance to read the book. I'm not saying people are crazy for having a conquest of expanding their knowledge, I'm only referring to those who feel what they're doing is the epitomized way of feeling they're on a higher level of enlightenment from anyone else just from one book.

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