I always kind of knew that the day was coming that we'd have to discuss the concepts of enlightenment, particularly

from the perspective of the great individuals of the past and today. We are going to start with Carl Jung. We will

not be just explaining his definition; rather, we will be going into what we might call the nitty-gritty

side of things. We will explain Carl Jung's process and path, we might say, to enlightenment. Now, we will have to cover

a couple of basics to make sure that if anyone is stepping freshly into this, they will be able to follow along decently

enough to begin. We will make the distinction between the conscious and subconscious faculties. The conscious awareness is exactly what I just called

it; it is a sense of self-awareness, a sense of self-being, and an immediate interaction with one's external

environment.  The subconscious faculty, however, while often seen by Carl Jung as a mix of repressed past memories

and things of that nature, is true; it can hold such things, but essentially the subconscious mind, we might say, is a

subliminal inscription tool; it is a hidden layer of awareness because it is constantly taking in information, much

like the conscious mind; however, it is putting them, we might say, in a back burner, behind the scenes. It's just

not some sphere of repressed thought; it's an ongoing influencer, we might say, upon the conscious faculty. Let's let's

take an example: red and yellow are known to make you hungry by altering your rate of metabolism. Now, you have no real means

to know this without study or test groups, yet it still works whether or not you're really aware of it. The red and

yellow caused a particular, we might say, instinctive response, which, while again we're stepping into another term Carl

Use collective unconscious; still fit within the subconscious, albeit of the individual. So in occultism, we can see this as the impression...

the conscious mind to shift a person's internal psyche; in other words, their unconscious mind. And this is a really

common explanation for magical behaviors and practices. Now these are typically done upon oneself to cause a greater change in, kind of, your, you might say, self-

perception; a change in our subconscious faculty to yield an intended result, which is really the birth of the 'fake it

till you make it' mentality. Surprisingly enough, however, in Jungian Theory, we take a different approach. We've looked to

reveal what was hidden. Now that's a really big point: to reveal what was hidden and bring it into our immediate

awareness, which is—Jung himself coined the term—individuation. What does it mean to bring the subconscious faculty into

conscious awareness? There are a couple of methodologies, but there's one that matters most: being aware of how the

subconscious mind impacts your subconscious faculty is a major stepping stone. Now, I mean, I graduated in marketing; it's honestly our

mode of study many times. This is something that the common person is really not privy to. Now, what does that

mean? What is this hidden thing? We should acknowledge a couple of common signs, or we might say instances of this. First of

all, a business logo. A cult-like—you could call this decision—but in a sense, a business logo actually is

sacral in nature because it is developing a presence—we might say a personification of existence—from an

inanimate form, but it does have an effect on your subconscious mind. You can look at, let's say, just any regular

business that you're accustomed to and say, 'Oh, that's such and such,' or 'They sell this or X or

Yeah, and that is kind of the power that this inscription has on an individual. It reveals itself to hold certain

qualities and content that the person's subconscious faculty is far more aware of, but it's so strong that they are

still consciously aware of it via the avenue of experience. So that is, in a sense, a way to be consciously aware of

the subconscious. But you had a very special interest, and this was in the idea of certain events being unaffected

and undeterred by the conscious faculty; and this was going to be dreaming. You seemed to believe that the nature of

dreams were present within an individual to the point that they were a full revealment of their subconscious psyche,

and this revealment was meant to give them insight into their internal nature, thereby assisting them in the daily

world, particularly with themselves. Now, that was a very roundabout way to say that you believed that dreams gave us

some insight into how we feel and what's going on in our lives from a subconscious perspective, not a conscious

perspective. But we apply our conscious rationality to the subconscious perspective and thereby get some form of

answers. But we come to the next scene; you also had the theory of the collective unconscious. The collective

unconscious was, in a sense, an inheritable series of signs and symbols. Now, I don't agree with this theory; I

believe that reality has a certain rigidity to it, and thereby human's philosophy, as the mind is a very

contained thing, seems to produce similar results in similar circumstances. Therefore, man's experience and his relation to things,

his creation of certain, we might say, abstractions, manifest themselves as very similar symbols. Anyways, individuation was the bringing

of the subconscious faculty into the conscious awareness. If a human being achieves this, you essentially seemed to believe that he elevated himself beyond

a certain limitation of the mental faculty. In fact, from a magical perspective, we might say that the individual was completely capable of

impression upon themselves, such that their will was truth, at least from their own sense of being and immediacy with

their environment. It was kind of like a power, we might say. Now we have to keep a couple of things in mind going forward

because we haven't fully touched on enlightenment. Individuation doesn't necessarily equal self-actualization.

Something is missing, something not very big, but something pertinent is missing. And this is ultimately not Jung's shortcoming, but a human shortcoming. The

mind has long been perceived as an intricate instrument, and the pulling in of the subconscious faculty to the

conscious was necessary or important, not only to Jung but to many people, because it has long been believed that

the idea of inspiration was something that was divinely sourced. This essence, we might say, that revealed itself as

inspiration. This divinely sourced concept was rooted in a certain level of significance to the individual, but it

was outside of themselves. Inspiration came from something outside of themselves; it was not strictly emotional, and it was not achieved necessarily, but

it was obtained. And its obtainment through the subconscious mind... this belief that the subconscious mind acted as a gateway to a certain level of

reality that the conscious mind wasn't aware of. Coming back around to the fact that the subconscious mind notices

things that the conscious faculty does not, because they are deemed unimportant. But subtleties are immensely important.

If we look to alchemy, particularly the old-world alchemy, the gross work is only the beginning; the subtle work is the big

steps to finishing one's project. So this subtlety of expression, coming into one's immediate psyche, was Hume's gate to

enlightenment. He believed that if you could touch upon these intricacies, that you would eventually find the deeper

intricacies that were of a supernal nature, thereby finding a sense of enlightenment. [Music]

Now, while this deals a lot with Carl Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, we must acknowledge that

symbol is intrinsically related to the subconscious faculty; hence the example that I gave you earlier about logos. So,

on the matter of symbolism, we must acknowledge one thing, and it's man's willingness, we might say, to divine

himself. This is because a very special scenario: What was man's first symbol? Many people say that man's first symbol

is a dot. And this is because when, we might say, a caveman, who in his expression took some sort of means of

painting or inscription, first made a single point. If he took an inscription tool, he cut into it, and that was a point.

If he took some sort of dye, he touched his finger to it, and that was a point. It did not matter in which direction he

pulled it—that was a line. However, man's first symbol was, in fact, himself. It was the creative agent of those

symbols and signs. It was the, we might say, mental form that predated the very act. And this is what would eventually

become, to some degree, man's conception of the divinity; and to be that creative nature, as many human beings already are,

is the pre-theological essence of divinity. Anyways, this has been River at the Minute on, and I thank you for joining me.

I'll see you next time, and a massive thank you to my patrons and supporters. I appreciate you more than you know.

Carl Jung's Path to Enlightenment

Carl Jung's Path to Enlightenment