CG JUNG - Countryside Anarchist

19 OCTOBER 1932
begin to invent a certain ceremony that allows you to disidentify yourself
from your emotions, or to overcome your emotions actually. You stop
yourself in your wild mood and suddenly ask, “Why am I behaving like
this?”
We find the symbolism for that in this center. In anvhata you behold
the puruüa, a small figure that is the divine self, namely, that which is not
identical with mere causality, mere nature, a mere release of energy that
runs down blindly with no purpose. 12 People lose themselves completely
in their emotions and deplete themselves, and finally they are burned to
bits and nothing remains—just a heap of ashes, that is all. The same
thing occurs in lunacy: people get into a certain state and cannot get out
of it. They burn up in their emotions and explode. There is a possibility
that one detaches from it, however, and when a man discovers this, he
really becomes a man. Through maõipÖra he is in the womb of nature,
extraordinarily automatic; it is merely a process. But in anvhata anew
thing comes up, the possibility of lifting himself above the emotional
happenings and beholding them. He discovers the puruüa in his heart,
the thumbling, “Smaller than small, and greater than great.” 13 In the
center of anvhata there is again åiva in the form of the li´ga, andthe
small flame means the first germlike appearance of the self.
Mr. Dell: Is the process you describe the beginning of individuation in
psychological terms?
Dr. Jung: Yes. It is the withdrawal from the emotions; you are no longer
identical with them. If you succeed in remembering yourself, if you succeed
in making a difference between yourself and that outburst of passion,
then you discover the self; you begin to individuate. So in anvhata
individuation begins. But here again you are likely to get an inflation.
Individuation is not that you become an ego—you would then become
an individualist. You know, an individualist is a man who did not succeed
in individuating; he is a philosophically distilled egotist. Individuation is
becoming that thing which is not the ego, and that is very strange. Therefore
nobody understands what the self is, because the self is just the thing
which you are not, which is not the ego. The ego discovers itself as being
a mere appendix of the self in a sort of loose connection. For the ego is
12 In his commentary on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Jung stated, concerning the translation
of the term puruüa, “Deussen designates [it] as ‘das von allem Objectiven freie Subject des
Erkennens’ [the subject of knowledge freed from everything objective]. I doubt this definition—it
is too logical, and the East is not logical; it is observant and intuitive. So it is better
to describe the puruüa as primeval man or as the luminous man.” Modern Psychology 3,
121.
13 Katha Upanisad 2.20–21; cited also in CW, vol. 6, §329, where puruüa is rendered as
“Self.”
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