Personifications of repressed images, ideas, emotions, and impulses. Especially when the “spirit” communications or hallucinated voices give orders to be obeyed, do they represent powerful and repressed images and ideas, feelings, and impulses strong enough to form about themselves their own personifications. Through these personifications, our inhibited and repressed fears can dramatize themselves as demons, devils, or evil visions that give orders of a destructive nature (and conversely as spirits, angels, or holy visions that give instructions of a constructive nature in those cases where our inhibited and repressed hopes and desires dramatize themselves).
Look behind the symbolism for the greater meanings. In all cases, Jung tells us to look behind the symbolism of the communication for the greater meanings beneath. The visions and voices are symbols for other dimensions of our psyche. Their language is not literal but symbolic. We must consider the possibility that such communications might be coming from portions of our own psychological reality that to some extent we have not assimilated but have instead projected outside of ourselves in personified form.
12. Developing methods for investigating the spiritual life of the mind.
Investigating the nature of the life of the mind. Psychological events have an objective side, therefore, a life of their own, and it is the job of transpersonal psychologists to investigate the nature of those lives. C. G. Jung developed a number of original techniques for communicating with the subconscious mind. One of the most useful as far as learning to integrate conscious and subconscious portions of the personality is concerned is the technique of Active Imagination (Johnson, 1986). Throughout all his personality theory, Jung acknowledged the importance of the integration of the outer and inner self for personality growth and development.
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Using Active Imagination for personal growth. For Jung, the goal of personality development is the recognition of the inner Self by all levels of the personality. The inner Self must become the ego-self. This unity then puts the individual in a position to begin a truly fulfilling existence. This requires that the conscious ego know enough to speak nearly as an equal with one’s inner Self. In order to become this knowledgeable, the technique of Active Imagination is an important aid. The process of communicating with your inner Self is to become conscious, with the ego highly involved.
Integration of ego with Self is the goal of maturity. The intuitive portions of the personality have to have the full cooperation of the intellectual and conscious self for this development to occur, however. The conscious ego has to appreciate in quite real terms its dependence upon the intuitional wisdom of the inner Self. There has to be agreement and unity between the conscious intellectual and subconscious intuitional portions of the personality. The conscious ego is not to be left by the wayside, wondering while the intuitional abilities lead to fulfillment. The conscious intellectual faculties have to realize that those abilities operate in order that they themselves be fulfilled. The intuitions and the intellect are meant to challenge and develop each other. What we are after is the recognition of the ego-directed self of the larger inner self of which it is a part. This is always the direction of development, until finally the immediate, outer self and the inner self are one, at which point further stages of development await.
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