http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=magazine

one of the most important grimoires of the modern age is about to see the light of day. i for one am extremely interested in perusing the record of Dr. Jung's mystical freak-out.

What happened next to Carl Jung has become, among Jungians and other scholars, the topic of enduring legend and controversy. It has been characterized variously as a creative illness, a descent into the underworld, a bout with insanity, a narcissistic self-deification, a transcendence, a midlife breakdown and an inner disturbance mirroring the upheaval of World War I. Whatever the case, in 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”

He later would compare this period of his life — this “confrontation with the unconscious,” as he called it — to a mescaline experiment. He described his visions as coming in an “incessant stream.” He likened them to rocks falling on his head, to thunderstorms, to molten lava. “I often had to cling to the table,” he recalled, “so as not to fall apart.”

Had he been a psychiatric patient, Jung might well have been told he had a nervous disorder and encouraged to ignore the circus going on in his head. But as a psychiatrist, and one with a decidedly maverick streak, he tried instead to tear down the wall between his rational self and his psyche. For about six years, Jung worked to prevent his conscious mind from blocking out what his unconscious mind wanted to show him. Between appointments with patients, after dinner with his wife and children, whenever there was a spare hour or two, Jung sat in a book-lined office on the second floor of his home and actually induced hallucinations — what he called “active imaginations.” “In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me ‘underground,’ ” Jung wrote later in his book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” “I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them.” He found himself in a liminal place, as full of creative abundance as it was of potential ruin, believing it to be the same borderlands traveled by both lunatics and great artists.

Jung recorded it all. First taking notes in a series of small, black journals, he then expounded upon and analyzed his fantasies, writing in a regal, prophetic tone in the big red-leather book. The book detailed an unabashedly psychedelic voyage through his own mind, a vaguely Homeric progression of encounters with strange people taking place in a curious, shifting dreamscape. Writing in German, he filled 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151&hl=en

awesome documentary series about the Freud family and the use of psychoanalytic theory by governments and big business. interesting how you never see any Jungians inventing corporate propaganda and attempting large scale social control...

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings. His influence on the twentieth century is generally considered profound. The series describes the ways public relations and politicians have utilized Freud's theories during the last 100 years for the "engineering of consent".

Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed. Freud's daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as is one of the main opponents of Freud's theories, Wilhelm Reich, in the third part.

Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality.

http://www.typealyzer.com/index.php?lang=en

this returns your Meyers-Briggs personality type based on the text of your blog. it nailed mine.

The analysis indicates that the author of http://adayinthelife.livejournal.com is of the type: INTP

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Symbol, language, myth & ritual - invoked and repeated - form the foundation of the western approach to magic. The process is by no means instantaneous, though shocks and traumas can suddenly jar the individual into a state of gnosis or illumination, but is rather an ongoing path of practice and dedication...our mental constructs expand to include the subtle aspects of nature and metaphysics, and the associative networks of the brain change to re-enforce the new mode of behavior.

In this context we can modify our world on two fronts: physical and mental. Trance, drugs, foods, exertion, breathing, and many other techniques offer ways to alter neurochemistry. By changing the chemistry we change the substrate of mind. Similarly, magic, mythology, language, mantra, symbolism, and sigils, among others, can each affect mental states and influence the associative networks of the brain. The personal goal is to employ these techniques to reprogram the brain in accordance with the will of the self...The tools available enable us to break down our conditioning and open our awareness...In doing so we open the mind to new ways of thinking and perceiving, and encourage the brain to integrate these novel perceptions into its physiology.

Suffice it to say that the magic practiced by an individual does not occur in a vacuum, and the assumed lines of boundary between us and everything else are mere illusion. In a vast field of electromagnetic waves with far more space than matter our flesh is only slightly denser than the air we breathe. The fields of the self & its brain are not confined to the skull and, when focused & amplified by the appropriate set of conditions, can influence the dynamic interference pattern that is existence...focused ritual can have subtly profound influences on the fields of life and consciousness...And in making information digital we have produced a simulacrum of reality entirely convincing yet entirely malleable...like the linguistic maps of belief woven within our minds. [+][+]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3678815/Dont-Be-Afraid-of-Black-Magick

(via oh_me_ghost)

The old theological cliche that the devil is the "father of lies" contains an important neuro-political truth...the ordinary reality of the conditioned citizen is somewhere around 99.97% mythology. Mind warping, brainwashing, demonology, the hurling of curses, etc, begin with the bare-faced lie that the mind warper's alternate reality is not mythology at all but "really" "real."

The Satanist's reality is real. So is Rev Sun Myung Moon's. And the nudist reality. The snake-worshiper's reality. The Methodist reality. The Republican reality. The SLA reality. The Buddhist reality. The vegetarian reality. The scientific reality. Every one of these realities is "real" to the nervous system programmed to convert all incoming energy signals into the coding (language categories) of that "reality," and to exclude as background noise all signals not fitting the code.

The biggest lie in the world is the idea that there is one "true" reality. That is the lie which keeps the conditioned citizen trapped in the one static reality imprinted by parents and schools in childhood. It is the lie which the black magician exploites in making the demons of his reality in your reality.

America is the greatest country in the world to the conditioned American. Fernando Poo is the greatest country in the world to the conditioned Pooan. Catholicism is the one true religion to the Catholic. Voodoo is the one true religion to the Voodooist. Mirrors and blue smoke.

There are dozens of meta-programming rituals in occult manuals, showing how to insulate your reality from attacking demonic forces out of some black magician's separate reality. Some of the best and most commonsensical are in Dion Fortune's Psychic Self Defense. Personally, I regard such rituals as unnecessary, since they take the terrorist too seriously.

http://realitysandwich.com/voyaging_dmt_space_with_dr_rick_strassman_md

from a large and awesome interview with Rick Strassman regarding his work and latest book.

It was obviously hard to come up with a model, at least in my mind, at least with what I knew at the time, to really be able to accept and hold and take the stories that people were telling me, and come up with a theory that I could live with scientifically and personally and ones that would make sense to the volunteers. I just started off with the most gross explanations and worked up from there when those got rejected. The grossest explanation is obviously that of the brain - this is your brain on drugs - you give people DMT their brain does this - this is why people where having these entity contact experiences.

But every explanation that I tried fell on fairly much deaf ears on the part of the volunteers. They either rejected the ideas about this being a brain on drugs, or the other approach that I was taking that was pretty much a psychological approach - these were unexpressed dreams or impulses or drives or motivations to be special or to belong or to have exciting experiences - kind of the Freudian approach. So when that didn't work, I tried to learn as much as I could as fast as I could, in terms of what Jung had said about UFOs and aliens, so I tried using those models or explanatory systems to kind of encompass people's experiences. That didn't work. I tried the more generic approach of interpreting what they were experiencing as dreams, but that didn't work either.

I tried and discarded various levels of interpretation until I finally just figured I'll just start to do an experiment assuming that what people are undergoing is real and that indeed they are experiencing or making contact with real, externally verifiable, discrete, freestanding sorts of beings. This is what they're saying and this is what they're doing and this is what is going on between them and the volunteer.

What happened as a result of that is that people became a lot more comfortable in sharing with me the full range of their experiences. I stopped fighting and trying to pigeonhole a round peg into a square hole - trying to fit their experiences with the theoretical constructs that I was stuck with. I think as a result of my change in attitude or approach that I was getting deeper and richer reports from people about what was going on. But still, as a scientist, I'm into mechanisms of action and when I started to write the book, I started to hunt around for scientific models that might encompass free-standing, sentient, independently existing, outside just one's mind, explanations for what people were undergoing.

So even though I'm no expert on quantum physics or any of the more far-out psychedelic views of cosmology, I did learn a little bit of this phenomena that is known as dark matter, which is non-visible matter that neither generates light nor reflects light, but still makes up 95% or more of the mass of the universe. It seemed to me that if it makes up that much mass of the universe, it could very well be inhabited, and it would just be a question of changing the receiving characteristics of consciousness through chemical changes that occurred with DMT to be able to perceive things that were normally not perceivable. And there are plenty of examples of that in everyday reality - I mean, with a microscope we can see tiny things we couldn't see normally - with a telescope we can see things very far away we can't see normally, with ultraviolet sensors we can see things that we can't normally see - so the only difference, maybe from a philosophical point of view, is that the change in our receiving powers are not tied in with a machine - they're more in our subjective/receptive consciousness rather than with a piece of metal and electricity and glass and things that can magnify or somehow change the things that we're capable of seeing.

So it's a bit of a stretch, but I don't think it's completely that crazy. The main thing that prevents further movement along the model that I'm talking about is just the verifiability between two people - like can two people see the same thing at the same time - like if you have two people looking through the same microscope at the same time, they can pretty much see and describe the same thing - but is it possible for two people to take DMT at the same time, or not even at the same time, and be able to see the exact same thing?

I don't think that we're going to come to the answers either through science or through religion. I think it's going to be some kind of hybrid. Science is a bit too constrained in the model building, and most religions are too constrained through the maintenance of their institution at the expense of the truth. As a rule, if you can establish the veracity of your findings through science, it's believed. It isn't excluded necessarily because someone disagrees with your findings. So I think it will require some kind of hybrid of scientific religion or spiritual science to be able to take into account the entire range of the phenomenon, the ethical implications that's available and also maintain the peer review and the cross-checking of your findings that occurs within the scientific model. Yeah - so it's pretty out there. It's kind of a large view and if I get one half of one percent done before I die, I'll feel pretty good about that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/21/study-the-effects-of-sero_n_114112.html

so it makes sense that tryptamines - close relatives of seratonin - should act as entheogens. this might also explain personal differences in reactions to similar doses of tryptamine compounds. and the genetic component in some traditions of shamanism. and probably a number of other remarkable phenomena.

According to Psychology Today and referencing the American Journal of Psychiatry, serotonin, the brain chemical in charge of moderating mood, metabolism, and sexuality, has been linked to spiritual experiences. Psychology Today reports:

A team of Swedish researchers has found that the presence of a receptor that regulates general serotonin activity in the brain correlates with people's capacity for transcendence, the ability to apprehend phenomena that cannot be explained objectively. Scientists have long suspected that serotonin influences spirituality because drugs known to alter serotonin such as LSD also induce mystical experiences. But now they have proof from brain scans linking the capacity for spirituality with a major biological element.

So what does this mean? Well, the researchers believe that it provides evidence that religiosity and spirituality are not defined necessarily or entirely by environmental or cultural factors, such as upbringing. Basically, those with a higher concentration of serotonin receptors will therefore most likely show a stronger inclination towards spiritual acceptance.

http://webhome.idirect.com/~lkeane/thesis.htm

a thesis on two of my favourite 20th century personalities. the paper compares and contrasts the lives and work of the "Great Beast 666" and the "Wizard of Zürich". both were sons of devout Christians who were at times into solitude, experienced "weirdness", produced "channeled" texts (The Book of the Law and Seven Sermons to the Dead), and generally advanced the cause of individualistic and (at least somewhat) scientific approaches toward spirituality. each man was a crucial modern link in the Western tradition (magic and alchemy). this paper points out the parallels between their systems (Magick and Analytical Psychology) in the light of how each can be seen as a Western continuation of the function of "shamanizing".

This thesis is a comparison of the works of two seemingly dichotomous individuals. The first work, Magick/Liber Aba, is by Western Esotericist (Occultist) Aleister Crowley [1875-1947]. Magick/Liber Aba sets out the major thrust of this prolific author's theories concerning Magick as a process towards spiritual attainment. The second work, Mysterium Coniunctionis, presents psychologist C.G. Jung's [1875-1961] interpretation of the alchemical tradition as a method toward individuation. These two men were individuals who were dissatisfied with the predominantly monophasic world-view of "Western" culture. Both Crowley and Jung can be seen as pioneers who attempted to foster a polyphasic world-view in which various states of consciousness such as dreams, fantasies, visions, and drug-induced experiences were not only valid but essential for the completion of the Great Work and the acquisition of ever deepening and widening gnosis in the quest to become fully human.

The "Cycle of Meaning" demonstrates how a symbol functions within a given world-view. At the top of the cycle we see the cosmology of the people or culture in question. That cosmology or ontological assumption is reflected in the culture's mythopoeia. The interpretation of the mythopoeia (such as art and ritual) is reinforced by a "shaman". That reenforcement influences the direct experience of the individual. The direct experience is then again interpreted by the shamanic agency. This interpretation then functions to reinforce the endemic cosmology. What results is a closed cycle which is perpetuated by the culture's shaman.

Not only was Jung writing from within the larger context of "Western" culture, he was also in a sense creating his own Cycle of Meaning. If a patient is being treated through the methods of Analytical Psychology then he or she can be as adopting that world-view. The analyst, as shaman,then reinforces the world-view and interprets any direct experience had by the patient, which in turn reconfirms the Analytical cosmology. In the case of Crowley and Jung we see that they both attempted to break the dominant Cycle (for Crowley it was the Western Esoteric Tradition and for Jung it was Freudian psychoanalysis) thereby creating their own Cycle of Meaning in which they themselves became the primary "initiator".

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of Crowley and Jung is that they demonstrated that the human condition is far more complicated and deeper than we generally suspect. Both men encouraged every person to delve deeply into their depths and examine, at length and with courage, what rose from those depths. Each man also insisted that the true goal of human development was to become fully human, to transcend the limitations imposed by collective consciousness and its constrictive epistemologies toward a union with inner powers universal in their embrace. By attempting to become more human in this sense we begin to break down the boundaries which prevent us from gaining more insight, more gnosis not only about ourselves as individuals, but our relation to others and the universe at large.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/study-just-thin.html

just goes to show that there can be power in certain glyphs and their related spirits.

Forget actually buying a Mac to unleash your creativity. A new study from researchers at Duke University and the University of Waterloo found that merely thinking about Apple can make you more creative -- at least with bricks.

After researchers flashed the company's logo in front of test subjects for an imperceptible 30 milliseconds, they discovered that people actually started behaving in ways associated with Apple's brand image, thinking differently, and apparently, more creatively.

During their study, researchers used both the Apple and IBM logos to see how people would react to the brands subconsciously. In the end, they concluded that brands resonated in pretty much that same way except in two specific areas: creativity and competence (IBM's strong suit). When asked to describe as many uses for a brick as they could, the Apple subjects averaged 30 percent more brick ideas than their IBM counterparts, according to researchers. An independent set of reviewers also deemed these ideas to be more creative.

IBM-primed subjects, one the other hand, all had strikingly similar answers. While one of the Duke professors involved in the study hesitates to directly link creativity to the use of Apple products, he does conclude that powerful brands can and do affect people's unconscious behavior.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6403624763313613569&vi_action=large

full length documentary describing the life and work of Jung.  includes several interviews with various associates of his, as well as footage of interviews with him, and some shots of mandalas and other artwork from the Red Book.  gets into psychoanalysis, religion, alchemy and even some funny anecdotes.  i didn't know that Jung, his wife, and another lady maintained an extended threesome, for example.  well worth a watch if you're into Jung.