This book is an expanded edition of my book, The Coming Guest: Advancing Jungs Augury into the 21st Century (2011, iUniverse) in which I examine three documents of the soul: a little-known high relief carving at Bollingen c.1960, along with two letters Jung wrote. In these documents I detected the presence of two Jungs. One is the depth psychologist whose legacy has developed into a discipline of psychology of the soul, with its methodology. The other is the artist who has left us a hidden legacyone that has remained virtually unnoticed for fifty years. This legacy also has a methodologyone very different from that of depth psychology. In this edition I begin the task of articulating the methodology of the art form that Jung inaugurated. Both depth psychology and this new art form remain faithful to Jungs notion of the soul as world-constituting, or as Jung says in his letter to Sir Herbert Read, the coming guest. Where depth psychology seeks to bring the coming guest into consciousness, the new art form seeks to bring him into incarnation!
In this book the author seeks to comprehend what possible meaning such a term as animal soul could have today given the psychological distance from our own animal nature, existing as we do within a technological civilization. He explores the thought of four pioneers in depth psychology: C. G. Jung, James Hillman, Wolfgang Giegerich, and Russell Lockhart, before proposing a meaning that emerges from soul as understood from within a depth psychological perspective.
We know that today we are divorced from nature to a degree that is threatening our existence. We also know that those sensual animal qualities that characterized our existence, when we were embedded soulfully in nature, have departed and we long for their return We appear to be in a soul process of overcoming solidity and entering a new status of soul-word in which the animal, the sensual, and the wild are indeed returning, but at a totally new and unheard-of level of complexity in consciousness. From the Introduction
Imagining this or that future as a way of generating hope and "hopeful action", far from moving us towards any desired outcome, is simply occluding our eyes from the reality that is right in front of us, daily. Our time is incredibly uncertain and our lives are dominated by catastrophic thinking, with fear more and more determining out real actions and outcomes, on the local or world scale. If we finally drop all pretense that hope can have any bearing on the future, we must then face the level of fear running freely through world affairs today and equally we must face the fact that predictability is impossible in regards to the future. Under these circumstances we can ask: is there any adequate way of addressing the future at all: a way that does not blind us to the fearful realities of our times; a way that does not address the unknown future in terms of predictability or hope; a way that nonetheless may indeed help prepare the unknown future? There is, and I will call it the way of the "artist". From the Introduction
In a letter written to Sir Herbert Read in 1960, C. G. Jung wrote: "We have simply got to listen to what the psyche spontaneously says to us the great dream [is] always spoken through the artist as mouthpiece It is the future and the picture of the new world, which we do not understand yet " This book, the sixth written by author John C. Woodcock (all published through iUniverse), extends and deepens the themes expressed in his previous books in his effort to comprehend and live the meaning embedded in Jung's famous letter. In Part One, Dr. Woodcock explores the path taken by David (Dr Woodcock's literary ego) in becoming a mouthpiece of the unknown future, an initiation that lasted over twenty years. Part Two is a variety of artistic offerings by Dr. Woodcock as mouthpiece. The entire book is dedicated to the task of giving artistic expression to the unknown future as it undergoes its transformations within his being and finds its way into actuality through him.
If the present alienation of mind from nature, i.e., the Cartesian reality principle, is to be overcome, there surely must be a climate of extreme depression amounting in many quarters to despair One way or another there is an opportunity here for a good writer who should fill out in terms of concrete events and experiences the issues If a society is really faced with startling changes and fairly imminent ones (and there is a good deal of evidence that ours is) it cannot be amiss for a few people here and there to be peering ahead, however inadequately, by way of preparation for them. Owen Barfield: The Coming Trauma of Materialism
In 1982 I was travelling in a suburban train between Boston and New York. I suddenly felt a stirring at the base of my spine and a trickle quickly turned into a rush of energy moving upward. Another will seemed to be working within me and I felt a mandate to shift my posture. Feeling awkward and embarrassed I assumed a lotus posture in the public carriage and waited for the next event. A flood of blissful fluid rushed up my spine emerging out of my heart. My journey with Kundalini had begun which would dominate and shape my life for the next twenty years. Making of a Man is a personal disclosure. Dr. Woodcock tells for the first time those intensely intimate experiences with Kundalini (the divine mother) that both deconstructed his personality and transformed it. The content of the book may look like poetry but in fact is the residue of a poesis, a making. These word forms are virtually unedited since the time he wrote them down during a long period of ecstatic vision. This book is thus the record of an intense sustained spiritual process during which Dr. Woodcock reached a region of reality where he experienced the love, power and wisdom of the creative word. What was spoken thus became so! A man was transformed and an aspect of spirit incarnated.
Transformation of the World is an account of the author's journey through a personal psychological crisis to the discovery of a new world forming out of the future within his psyche. This new world is one born from chaos through the power of love . The reader is taken into the experiences of the author through a form of literature that may not have a name at this point in time. It is a form of writing that flowed spontaneously from the author's hand The process involves memories of a kind of dual consciousness, interweaving of past present and future, inner and outer reality, along with philosophical thoughts expressed in direct speech which came to the author quite spontaneously. All these elements are brought to life in the adventures of the purely literary figures, David and Master John while the narrator is John, the author. Each character leads a separate life but are they really separate? The reader will discover the truth at the very end (from the Preface). "I prepare you for a ride with this book. It begins swiftly, and doesn't let up" (from the Foreword by David Tresemer, Ph.D.)
In this book the author seeks to comprehend what possible meaning such a term as animal soul could have today given the psychological distance from our own animal nature, existing as we do within a technological civilization. He explores the thought of four pioneers in depth psychology: C. G. Jung, James Hillman, Wolfgang Giegerich, and Russell Lockhart, before proposing a meaning that emerges from soul as understood from within a depth psychological perspective.
In 1982 I was travelling in a suburban train between Boston and New York. I suddenly felt a stirring at the base of my spine and a trickle quickly turned into a rush of energy moving upward. Another will seemed to be working within me and I felt a mandate to shift my posture. Feeling awkward and embarrassed I assumed a lotus posture in the public carriage and waited for the next event. A flood of blissful fluid rushed up my spine emerging out of my heart. My journey with Kundalini had begun which would dominate and shape my life for the next twenty years. Making of a Man is a personal disclosure. Dr. Woodcock tells for the first time those intensely intimate experiences with Kundalini (the divine mother) that both deconstructed his personality and transformed it. The content of the book may look like poetry but in fact is the residue of a poesis, a making. These word forms are virtually unedited since the time he wrote them down during a long period of ecstatic vision. This book is thus the record of an intense sustained spiritual process during which Dr. Woodcock reached a region of reality where he experienced the love, power and wisdom of the creative word. What was spoken thus became so! A man was transformed and an aspect of spirit incarnated.
Imagining this or that future as a way of generating hope and "hopeful action", far from moving us towards any desired outcome, is simply occluding our eyes from the reality that is right in front of us, daily. Our time is incredibly uncertain and our lives are dominated by catastrophic thinking, with fear more and more determining out real actions and outcomes, on the local or world scale. If we finally drop all pretense that hope can have any bearing on the future, we must then face the level of fear running freely through world affairs today and equally we must face the fact that predictability is impossible in regards to the future. Under these circumstances we can ask: is there any adequate way of addressing the future at all: a way that does not blind us to the fearful realities of our times; a way that does not address the unknown future in terms of predictability or hope; a way that nonetheless may indeed help prepare the unknown future? There is, and I will call it the way of the "artist". From the Introduction
Transformation of the World is an account of the author's journey through a personal psychological crisis to the discovery of a new world forming out of the future within his psyche. This new world is one born from chaos through the power of love . The reader is taken into the experiences of the author through a form of literature that may not have a name at this point in time. It is a form of writing that flowed spontaneously from the author's hand The process involves memories of a kind of dual consciousness, interweaving of past present and future, inner and outer reality, along with philosophical thoughts expressed in direct speech which came to the author quite spontaneously. All these elements are brought to life in the adventures of the purely literary figures, David and Master John while the narrator is John, the author. Each character leads a separate life but are they really separate? The reader will discover the truth at the very end (from the Preface). "I prepare you for a ride with this book. It begins swiftly, and doesn't let up" (from the Foreword by David Tresemer, Ph.D.)
A new reality is emerging into consciousness and catching more and more people up in its processes, particularly those who call themselves voice hearers. This reality: • is 'of the mind', yet objective, i.e. does not originate in the hearer's subjective mind; • is 'sensual', i.e. has a 'body'; • has its own consciousness, which is not reducible to the hearer's subjective consciousness. • is distinguishable from outer reality, but not spatially separate. This is an exceedingly difficult and complex formulation yet if we are to remain absolutely faithful to all aspects of voice hearers' experiences then we are forced to think the new reality in these terms. This hypothesis implies that voice hearers, far from being pathological, are harbingers of a 'new world' i.e. a new structure of consciousness and new forms of reality. Trauma may indeed have opened hearers up to the new reality but this reality is not reducible to such traumas. The three voices that Dr. Woodcock 'heard' as he sat at his desk in 2005 belong to, or are a property of this new reality. Once he tuned into what they were each saying, he could begin to record a 'conversation' emerging from within his mind. This conversation turned to his surprise to the very question of the new emergent reality." (from the preface) This book thus introduces the reader to the author's hypothesis of a new reality as the origin of 'inner voices' or 'figures of speech'. The author's 'inner voices' then lead the reader into this new reality via the author's own experiences. Finally, an essay is included that explores the new reality from a more theoretical perspective. John C. Woodcock Ph.D. is also the author of THE COMING GUEST and THE IMPERATIVE
Our ancestors lived in a world saturated with spiritual significance. Unusual events occurring within the contingencies of life were easily comprehended in terms of spiritual reality (the work of the gods for example) and the future was generally pictured in terms of the after-life. People could thus feel a measure of security in their present circumstances and some certainty about their future. In contrast, our ordinary existence today seems bereft of any spiritual significance, generating insecurity in our lives and uncertainty in the face of what has now become an unknown future. In this series of essays, the author describes unusual events in his own life that he chose to follow, or act upon. In so doing, he slowly discovered that a certain kind of non-random event can be a hint of unknown futures seeking to unfold into existence. These essays together form the outline of an art form, or method for proceeding from personal insecurity and uncertainty towards comprehension of the spiritual significance lying within ordinary life.
Towards the end of his long life, Jung carved a complex arrangement of figures into the wall at his retreat in Bollingen. When asked what they meant, Jung wrote in a letter, "Nobody is more uncertain about their meaning than the author himself. They are their own representation of the way they came into being." (1976, p. 615) Since that time these carved figures have rested quietly in stone, mute for over fifty years except for one voice which became a mouthpiece: the voice of Russell Lockhart: "Doesn't it seem that Jung is talking about coming events in the world? Isn't this image in stone an augur's image?" (1987, p. 75) The Coming Guest: Advancing Jung's Augury into the 21st Century. is a book of analysis and auguries. The author shows how Jung's augury continues to flow into and inform our present times. In the spirit of analysis, the author offers a description of our times "from within" i.e. from the soul's point of view. As an augur, he then shows how his own dream-visions offer an enriched "dreaming onwards" of Jung's augury so that we may better comprehend it as it works its way into actuality, through us.
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