You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Cosmic Fusion<br />
unconsciousness, I was in no way aware of such a situation; on<br />
the contrary I could not undo myself from a feeling of superiority, as<br />
at every step, I was reminded of being a European. I was not prepared<br />
to meet the unconscious forces within me, which emerged<br />
with such an intensity on behalf of the opposing party and which<br />
led to such an intense conflict.”<br />
Only several years later did Jung begin to understand the deeper<br />
nature of the dream. He began to see in the dream the resurgence<br />
of primordial structures or patterns in himself from a well-known<br />
past, but a past he had forgotten. He perceived the resurgence of<br />
these images as a renewed awareness of a still available potential<br />
for life, which was overgrown by civilization, a potential for life, which<br />
had been repressed and marginalized into the sub-conscious. In<br />
Jung’s view, Western culture had become alienated to much of<br />
what being human represents: the primordial dimension of our being,<br />
which had been relegated to the underground.<br />
Jung was a great admirer of the Taoist tradition and expressed<br />
his deep appreciation for its originality and wisdom in writing the<br />
foreword for the translation of the I Ching into German by Wilhelm<br />
Reich (the first translation into a European language).<br />
The split between body and mind, thinking and feeling, matter<br />
and spirit, at the root of the formation of Western culture and religion<br />
and the birth of modern science, has been aggravated in the<br />
course of this century.<br />
Feminine Underground Current<br />
Some historians and scholars, like Morris Berman in his path-breaking<br />
studies “The Re-enchantment of The World” and “Returning to<br />
Our Senses” have argued, that in the course of this process the<br />
feminine dimension of European culture greatly suffered and in<br />
order to survive had to make itself invisible and so became its undercurrent.<br />
He means by this that in religion, with its reliance on<br />
external authority and its contempt for the body as well as in science,<br />
with its pursuit of objectivity, at the expense of other sources<br />
of cognition, the body was devalued.<br />
Subsequently it could be turned into a mere object, an input and<br />
an instrument. It was seen in function of externally determined aims,<br />
as defined by the forces of competition, economic rationality and<br />
rational management and the new forms of communications<br />
- 229 -