In his book The Aryan Christ, author Richard Noll put his finger on one of the most important experiences in Carl Jung's life. If he had been able to decipher it correctly, he would have changed Analytical psychology.
He wrote:
In December 1913, Jung deliberately and repeatedly induced trance states using methods he had learn from his experience with spiritualism. This technique, which he would later called "active imagination" sparked a series of intense visionary experiences that Jung interpreted as his direct mystical initiation into one of the most ancient of the pagan mystery cults of the Hellinistic world.
Jung became an initiate into this brotherhood during an extraordinary epiphany.
His head changed into that of a lion and he became a god. He became the Deus leontocephalus, the lion-headed god whose image is found in the sanctuaries of the mystery cult of Mithras (first to four century C. E). Jung became a god known to us as Aion.
During this experience, Carl Jung did not become a god and he did not even think that he was a god. This is Noll's construct to prove his thesis of an evil Jung. However, that experience is very important because it is his first transcendent experience.
What has happened then was the appearance of an extremely numinous symbol of conjunction of opposites. The opposites me-God or me-universe are a regular occurence in mystical experiences. Some live it as a feeling of being one with the universe, others as a communion with God. Those experiences always come from the symbols that are alive in the unconscious. For Jung, the symbol of God was the Deus leontocephalus or AION because he has studied it in his book Symbols of Transformation (1912).
This transcendent experience effectively changed Jung's life. He never stopped afterward to understand the cause and meaning of that experience. He wrote the essay The transcendent function in 1916 but decided not to publish it. He feared the consequences on his career. It was only published in 1958 when some students of the C. G. Jung Institute discovered it. His first hypothesis was that the transcendent experience originated from the technique of active imagination. In his book Psychological Types (1921), the chapter 5 presents a second hypothesis: transcendent experiences come from the development of cognitive functions. Later, he would link them to a consciously performed individuation process where three steps are necessary: the integration of the projections both personal and collective and the development of the tertiary and inferior cognitive functions.
Noll's hypothesis of an evil Jung does not hold up. It would have required from Jung a supreme intelligence, a narcissistic personality and a need to shine in the world. This was not congruent with his personality. As an introverted, Jung refrained numerous times being put under the spotlight. At best, we notice in him some traits of character that belong to the single child which he was for the first 9 years of his life.
A more simple explanation
Let's add that Jung did not become an initiate in the brotherhood of the Mithras cult. That is exaggeration which, to its very face, doesn't hold up. The whole scene displayed by Noll has a more simple explanation. Facing depression for a few months, Jung tried to analyze his chilhood events with no results. He then began to play with pebbles, constructing small houses. It is out of despair that he choose to imagine discussions with his personalized feelings. There is nothing evil in that.
When the Aion experience happened to him, he did not undertand it. This is a normal reaction to that kind of events. He began to search for the occurrence of those experiences in mankind's history. His first finding was Gnosticism. It is well explained in Jung's book AION. Gnostics knew of three transcendent experiences that were called water, serpent and logos. It was much later, after 1928, that he found in alchemy the same experiences. Gerhard Dorn's three conjunctions of opposites, unio mentalis, lapis and rotundum are the alchemical twin of the Gnostics' experiences.
What about the Red Book?
After his transcendent experience and his research in Gnosticism, Jung decided to put in writing what had happened to him. Although he was not an initiate and did not see himself as a god, he understood that his experience was something rare and precious. That is the reason for The Red Book, The New Book or Liber Novus.
Did he thought he was chosen or special? Well, probably. The man had a certain pride. Who would not after such an experience? But with the years, that feeling eventually faded off and he eventually let his book aside, understanding that it was a youthful mistake.
If Noll had pushed his research a little bit further and put aside his profound dislike for Jung, he would have found that it is often the simplest explanation that is the better one as the Occam razor tells us. The Aion experience explains, as an Ariadne's thread, every moves and interests in Carl Jung's life.
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