Wednesday 26 December 2007

Daemon-Eidolon Dyad According to C J Jung

I received an email today from a member of this blog who is located in Switzerland. ArtFunk forwarded me an email that had been sent to him by a friend from Australia. Art wished to let me know the similarities between my theory of the Daemon-Eidolon Dyad and those of the great psycho-analyst Carl Gustav Jung. Jung uses the term Dioscuri. I have been long aware of Jung's writings but it was new to me exactly how similar to mine they are. Here an extended quote from his book "Concerning Rebirth" -

"This “other being” is the other person in ourselves – that larger and greater personality maturing within us, whom we have already met as the inner friend of the soul. That is why we take comfort whenever we find the friend and companion depicted in a ritual, an example being the friendship between Mithras and the sun-god. This relationship is a mystery to the scientific intellect, because the intellect is accustomed to regard these things unsympathetically. But if it made allowance for feeling, we would discover that it is the friend whom the sun-god takes with him on his chariot, as shown in the monuments. It is the representation of a friendship between two men which is simply the outer reflection of an inner fact: it reveals our relationship to that inner friend of the soul into whom Nature herself would like to change us – that other person who we also are and yet can never attain to completely. We are that pair of Dioscuri, one of whom is mortal and the other immortal, and who, though always together, can never be made completely one. The transformation processes strive to approximate them to one another, but our consciousness is aware of resistances, because the other person seems strange and uncanny, and because we cannot get accustomed to the idea that we are not absolute master in our own house. We should prefer to be always “I” and nothing else. But we are confronted with that inner friend or foe, and whether he is our friend or foe depends on ourselves.

You need not be insane to hear his voice. On the contrary, it is the simplest and most natural thing imaginable. For instance, you can ask yourself a question to which “he” gives answer. The discussion is then carried on as in any other conversation. You can describe it as mere “associating” or “talking to oneself”, or as a “meditation” in the sense used by the old alchemists, who referred to their interlocutor as aliquem alium internum, “a certain other one, within” This form of colloquy with the friend of the soul was even admitted by Ignatius Loyola into the technique of his Exercitia spiritualia, but with the limiting condition that only the person meditating is allowed to speak, whereas the inner responses are passed over as being merely human and therefore to be repudiated. … But a real colloquy becomes possible only when the ego acknowledges the existence of a partner to the discussion…. (p. 132)
[It is about transformation] “It is my own transformation – not a personal transformation, but the transformation of what is mortal in me into what is immortal. It shakes off the mortal husk that I am and wakens to a life of its own; it mounts the sun-barge and may take me with it”. (~ C.G. Jung, “Concerning Rebirth”, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, C.W. volume 9i. Page 134)

Interesting is it not.

7 comments:

SM Kovalinsky said...

Yes, it is very interesting. I had read these kinds of statements of Jung's in the past, and they parallel and mirror your eidolon/daemon dyad extremely. Also the Overself of James. And the line from Nietzsche, "and then one became two, and Zarathustra came into my view.": one could see in this the emergence into view of the daemon for Nietzsche. And in the collected works of Edgar Allen Poe, his poem "Alone" ends with him saying that all his life his eyes were turned toward "a daemon in my view". Also, do you know of James Hillman's book, "The Soul's Code"? He actually refers to the other self as a daemon ( took it from Plato). One last thing: I found a long essay on the Daemon on the internet. By a theologian, but he speaks non-religiously.

SM Kovalinsky said...

Just wanted to add: The essay is called, "On the Daemon" by Phil Mead & it is on Theandros, an online journal of philosophy & Christianity.

Anthony Peake said...

I have, indeed, read 'The Soul Code' by James Hillman. I found it very interesting but after a great start he rather lost way I thought.

I am always amazed as to how many writers seem to touch upon elements of the Daemon-Eidolon Dyad and CTF but never take the evidenceto any form of logical conclusion. Mind you if they had then I would not have ben able to come up with my theory!

Anthony Peake said...

I have been long fascinated by James and his concept of "The Overself". Indeed I feel that James was working towards a similar theory to mine via the route of psychology in the same way that F W H Myers was doing so from parapsychology with his concept of the "Subliminal Self". In my next book I have referenced both these great thinkers with regard to my Daemon-Eidolon Dyad. As Newton famously said "I have only seen so far by standing upon the shoulders of giants".

SM Kovalinsky said...

As I had said in a post last month, James had a strong intuition and a propensity for the idea that consciousness precedes matter, and does not arise from it. Hence, his idea of an Overself that spun out the life of the daily self. And he made reference to the biblical "Have I not said, ye are gods?" (which Jesus of Nazareth used to defend his "Father-Son" dyad; philosophically akin to that of your daemon-eidolon, the "son" signifying the entry into the blessed state which he termed the "Father"). And this was where James felt our kinship to gods resided: in the spinning out of life from consciousness, as in your Bohmian I-MAX. . .And as for your own work in the 21st century, as Nietzsche says, it takes a profound and robust man -- in possession of his own sort of genius--to follow the trails of great men. . .

Anonymous said...

wow how strange you bring Edgar Allen Poe into things, iv read alot of what you say susan on this blog and its all very interesting,i always had some sort of link with Edgar Allen Poe, my friends say i write poems the same as he does. i traveled all the way to bultimore usa just to go his house where he was bought up, he use to live down town bultimore, it was a brilliant place to go, the house he was bought up in, was so small and so dark it was like a shed, most people thought he was mad, whilst i was there i landed this job that paid me anything up to 20 dollers a minute, so its thanks to Edgar Allen Poe, that i have what i have now.

SM Kovalinsky said...

Zenna; I am glad that you enjoy my posts, and that you seem to have had such a fortunate synchronicity with Mr. Poe!