Jung, however, introduced a dark note into
this creative enterprise of integrating
earlier traditions when he wrote, "The
problems which the integration of the
Unconscious sets modern doctors and
psychologists can only be solved along
the lines traced out by history, and the
upshot will be a new assimilation of the
traditional myth [psychic container].
This however presupposes the continuity
of historical development. Naturally the
the present naturally the
present tendency to destroy all
tradition or render in unconscious could
interrupt a normal process of
development for several hundred years
and substitute an interlude of barbarism.
Edinger has said that Jung's remark is
really a "prediction," and one cannot help
but recall that the transition from
classical Greco-Roman culture to mature
Christian institutions did in fact
require much blood and confusion, even
centuries of what historians called the
"Dark Ages." It follows that we can expect
something similar. And lest we not feel
what that might mean, we have this comment
from an interview with the author. (This
is with Edinger.) "It seems absolutely
inevitable that immense turmoil,
convulsive movements and eruptions of
chaos in vast proportions are in the
making so far as the political-historical aspect of mankind is
concerned. That, I think, will dwarf the
upheaval that took place at the
beginning of the Christian era with the
gradual disintegration of the Roman
Empire. That was small potatoes by
comparison to what will happen this time.
End quote.  Yet Edinger believed that this
terrible transition in culture, (what the
poet Yeats called the "rough beast its
hour come round at last") will be bearable
if we understand the meaning of what is
going on. It is really to this end that the
author produced the following chapters.
No biblical book--with the exception of
the Old Testament Book of Daniel--
provides a more sustained treatment of
the theme of cultural transition than
does the New Testament Book of
Revelation. Understanding it in modern
terms; assimilating it as a psychological
document will help us to grasp the
unconscious currents of the present,
guide our anticipation of the
future and provide the meaning we need
to endure the terror of change. Edinger
goes further: he states the hypothesis... he
states the hypothesis that if enough
people understand what is going on, if
enough people internalize the meaning of
"Apocalypse" in their own life process,
then--according to the symbolism of the
"saving remnant" in the Book of Revelation
itself--the worst of external catastrophe
can be softened. That hypothesis places
the reader of this book in a crucial
position.
Then I think I read the other part, but I
mean it's... so the guy's been dead for 20
years, and nobody's paid attention. So
we've been talking about the Preface to
this book, the _Archetype of the
Apocalypse_. I urge you to pick it up and
read it... Okay and Edinger knew something
and he gave a warning. He died in 1998 so
you have to appreciate. By the time of
the _Archetype of the Apocalypse_ lectures
Edward Edinger had already taken on this
responsibility with many important works.
I should note however that the author's
concern for Apocalyptic issues is not
new. Since the second half of Jung's
_Answer to Job_ deals with Revelation
Edinger had to comment upon it in his own
work _Transformation the God Image_, and
elucidation of Jung's _Answer to Job_.
That's this book.  So he had already dealt
with it in that. The author was really in
the realm of Apocalypse in his study as
_The New God Image_, and also in _Goethe's
Faust_, and the seminal essay entitled _The
New Myth in _Creation of Consciousness_,
which is this book. Okay? So I was
already talking about it in all these
things. The time of these 10 lectures on
the specific topic of the Archetype of
Apocalypse, in early 1995 however became
shockingly apt. Within a month of their
delivery there occurred the Nation's
worst terrorist attack the Federal
Building in Oklahoma City was bombed by
an American possessed by the archetypal
idea that the 168 men women and children
he killed and the hundreds he wounded
were part of an Evil Empire. He killed
them also in revenge for the deaths two
years earlier of 80 persons of an
apocalyptic cult killed in a fiery blaze
in Waco, Texas. Deeply moved
Edinger wrote to his city's newspaper
the following letter entitled "The
Psychology of Terrorism." Now he wrote this to
the LA Times. Here's the letter: "Terrorism
is a manifestation of the Psyche. It is
time we recognized the Psyche as an
autonomous factor in world affairs.
The psychological root of terrorism is a
fanatical resentment; a quasi-psychotic
hatred originating in the depths of the
archetypal Psyche and therefore carried
by religious archetypal energies. A
classic literary example is Melville's
_Moby Dick_. Captain Ahab, with his
fanatical hatred of the white whale, is a
paradigm for the modern terrorist.
Articulate terrorists generally express
themselves in religious archetypal
terminology. The enemy is seen as the
principle of objective Evil (the Devil),
and the terrorist perceives himself as
the heroic agent of divine or objective
justice. God. This is an archetypal
inflation of demonic proportions which
temporarily grants the individual almost
superhuman energy and effectiveness. To
deal with terrorism effectively, we must
understand it. We need a new category to
understand this new phenomenon.
These individuals are not criminals and are
not madmen, although they are although
they have some qualities of both. Let's
call them zealots.
Zealots are possessed by
transpersonal archetypal dynamisms
deriving from the Collective Unconscious.
Their goal is a collective, not a
personal one. The criminal seeks his
own personal gain; not so the zealot. In
the name of a transpersonal collective
value--a religion, an ethnic, or national
identity, a patriotic vision etc.--they
sacrifice their personal life in the
service of their God. Although
idiosyncratic and perverse, this is
fundamentally a religious phenomenon
that derives from the archetypal
Collective Unconscious.
Sadly the much-needed knowledge of this
level of the Psyche is not generally
available. For those interested in
seeking it, I recommend a serious study
of the Psychology of C.G. Jung." Guess what!
They didn't publish it. Okay, so let me
read on here. They didn't publish it.
Reading on:  As a sign of the times
this letter was not published.
Instead the Nation was deluged with mere
descriptions of the horror, along with
biographies of the suspects, with hardly a
line of print or moment of television
dedicated to understanding what had
happened. The Governor of Oklahoma would
say at a memorial service,  "We can't
understand why it happened." Billy Graham,
Baptist chaplain to the Nation, had
already confessed on national television
before a crowd of weeping survivors that
he did not know why God allows things
like this to happen. Nobody seems to know
what is going on, yet Edinger's book
bravely tells us. So anyway [Voice] So when they're referencing Edinger's book, they're talking about _Archetype of the Apocalypse_.
Yeah, they're talking about this book,
_Archetype of the Apocalypse_, which is
the ten lectures he gave immediately
before. What I'm saying about that is that
Edinger, even before 9/11, before all the
things that have happened in the 21st century,
and even before Oklahoma City, sensed
this was coming. ... I mean this is a...
I read the beginning of this is week,
what I just read you ,and I go "Oh my
God!" But the point is that it's coming...
yeah that it's coming out and from
artists right ... too!
And so this means that these ideas
are in the Collective Unconscious...[Voice] So we're generating?...
Well we were ignoring the fact, and
that's the point here, that you know,
psychologists have been talking about
this stuff for years. And, you know, the
general public won't pay any attention.
Okay, not the general public. The
general public would pay attention if
Wolf Blitzer would talk about it. [Voice] Don't get me started on "Breaking News" Blitzer!
[Laughter] "Breaking News!"  [Voice] Every ten minutes it's the same thing for hours.
"Breaking News!"  And it's not!  It's breaking the first time. But I have a problem it.
Yeah, well I mean... but the point is that
that Cable News, is not talking about
psychology and what's happening. [Voice] There's a loop, what they do.
Yeah they're not talking about the
president, and what the risks are to his
psychology, and how he's reacting to
things. Oh my God I went to the seminar,
He was saying that the United States is
very seriously
now misaligned. The government is
misaligned with population. And, no it's
not a big surprise! It's perfectly
obvious that what West Virginia is
concerned about is jobs. They don't want
to go back in the friggin coal mines!  And the
fact that Trump is going to make the
coal mines open again?
Did he ask any of the coal mine
operators about that? [Voice] They're not going to do it with pick and shovel anyway! Yeah I mean because
now that now they just rip the mountains
apart from the top down. They don't
bother to go down in the hole anymore! [Laughter]
And it's all automated as you say, so
they don't need a thousand guys
down in the hole two miles. Right? [Voice]
He's gonna bring back video cassettes. [Laughter]
Okay so here's...  there's another part of
this that I should read though, okay, because now
we're talking about _Archetype of the
Apocalypse_, and this is the Editor's
Preface to it. Roughly half of the
verses of the Book of Revelation are
commented upon here. In a larger
perspective, however, [Dr. Edward] Edinger was not
breaking new ground for himself. He had
long been convinced that Jung's
psychological experience had given birth
to a New World View; an entirely
New World View, which has as its central
principle and supreme value the Human
Psyche, with its unique phenomenon of
consciousness by this comment, the author
was explaining why he had written an
essay on the 19th century Sage of
Concorde Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Okay quote: "If the new world view is to
take its place as a new cultural
dominant, a long process of reorientation
and assimilation is required. Just as
emergent Christianity required the
devoted efforts of generations to
assimilate the previous Greek learning,
so modern psychology will gradually
assimilate into its own forms and modes
of understanding, the products of human
culture that have preceded it. This task
I take to be the responsibility of the
analyst and psychologically informed
laity of the present and the future."
That's us! [Laughter] [Voice] "Laity!" Wow, what a term! Laity, we're the laity.
We're laymen vis-a-vis the psychologists.
Okay, we're not therapists. Well there may
be more there;  there actually
there may be there may be a double
entendre, but I mean what what he was
expressing was a new dispensation of the
mystery of God. Right? And so he was
saying that there was the law, from the Jews;
Belief through the Christians; and now the
psychological dispensation of the
mystery of God.
You know I too am saying that that we're
talking about God ,we're not talking
about any religion though! I think this
is this is why Jung's vision, when he
was 11 right, when God pooped on the
Cathedral of Basel, [Laughter] you know, Jung's
vision pretty much told him you know
religion isn't the answer....
Yeah I mean that's right! Okay, so you
have to hear the rest of this now! Okay this is
uh... This gets better! This is the Editors
Preface to this book. We haven't even got
to what Edinger said. Okay so by the
time of the _Archetype of the Apocalypse_... by the
time of the _Archetype of the Apocalypse_
lectures, Edward Edinger had already
taken on his responsibility with many
important work... had taken on this
responsibility with many important works.
To indicate his range of accomplishment
there's the full length treatment of
Moby Dick by Emerson's contemporary
Herman Melville, a psychological analysis
of the Greek myth in _The Eternal Drama_,
essays on major themes in the Hebrew
Bible, in _The Bible and the Psyche_, and
on the Christian themes in _The Christian
Archetype_, a study of _Goethe's Faust_, and
reflections and William Blake's
illustrations for the Book of Job. These
are all acts of assimilation, as is this
effort to understand psychologically the
Book of Revelation, and keep in mind that
what he came up with was that the whole
Old Testament is basically the
Individuation of the Jewish nation.
That's where he's saying.
So it's the Individuation of the whole
Jewish nation, and it was only at the
point of Job that the individual
actually appears. Up until then it was a
tribe. Right? It was participation mystique.
Okay, so Jung however introduced a
dark note into this creative enterprise
of integrating earlier traditions when
he wrote, quote: "The problems which the
integration of the Unconscious sets
modern doctors and psychologists can
only be solved along the lines traced
out by history, and the upshot will be a
new assimilation of the traditional myth. [Psychological container.]
This, however, presupposes the continuity
of historical development. Naturally the
present tendency to destroy all
traditional, or render it unconscious, could
interrupt the normal process of
development for several hundred years
and substitute an interlude of barbarism.
Edinger had said that Jung's remark
is really a prediction, when... Let's start
at the beginning...
Jung, however, introduced a dark note
into this creative enterprise of
integrating earlier traditions when he
wrote:
"The problems which the integration of
the unconscious sets modern doctors and
psychologists can only be solved along
the lines traced out by history. The
upshot will be a new assimilation of the
traditional myth.  This, however,
presupposes the continuity of historical
development. Naturally the present
tendency to destroy all tradition, or
render it unconscious, could interrupt a
normal process of development for
several hundred years, and substitute an
interlude of barbarism.
Edinger has said that Jung's remark is
really a prediction. It follows that we
can expect something similar and less
and lest we not feel that we ... and lest we
not feel what that might mean, we have
this comment from an interview with the
author. This is with Edinger.  "It seems
absolutely inevitable that immense
turmoil, convulsive movements, and
eruptions of chaos in vast proportions
are in the making so far as the
political and historical aspect of
mankind is concerned. That I think will
dwarf the upheaval that took place at
the beginning of the Christian era with
the gradual disintegration of the Roman
Empire. That was small potatoes by
comparison to what will happen this time.
End quote.  Yet Edinger believed that this
terrible transitioning culture, what the
poet Yeats called "the rough beast, its
hour come round at last," will be bearable
if we understand the meaning of what is
going on. It is really to this end that the
author produced the following chapters.
No biblical book with the exception of
the Old Testament Book of Daniel
provides a more sustained treatment of
the theme of cultural transition than
does the New Testament
Book of Revelation. Understanding
it in modern terms; assimilating it as a
psychological document will help us to
grasp the unconscious currents of the
present, guide ... guide our
anticipation of the future and provide
the meaning we need to endure the terror
of change. He states the hypothesis that
if enough people understand what is
going on; if enough people internalize
the meaning of apocalypse in their own
life process, then according to the
symbolism of the "saving remnant" in the
Book of Revelation itself, the worst of
external catastrophe can be softened.
That hypothesis places the reader of
this book in a crucial position but... I
mean it's... So the guy's been dead for 20
years and nobody's paid any attention. So
we've been talking about the Preface to
this book, the _Archetype of the
Apocalypse.
I urge you to pick it up and read it.
