Chicken Little: The Inside Story (A Jungian ... - Inner City Books

120 Chicken Little: The Inside Story
“Daumal was a brilliant writer of allegory,” said Brillig, “but not
well-versed in psychology. In light of Jung’s discoveries, it seems
to me that we are obliged to stand Daumal’s remarks on their head:
what is below knows what is above, but what is above does not
know what is below.
“Which is to say, there is an all-seeing eye in the unconscious—
let us call it the Self, why not—but we puny beings, up here, can
only find out what’s going on down there, as the Inanna lines suggest,
by listening.”
“Dreams,” said Arnold, “and active imagination.” 117
“Staring at the wall,” I added.
“Yes,” said Brillig. “And as you know, it really is an art, quite
analogous to what is involved in Daumal’s mountain climbing: the
ability to conduct yourself consciously according to what you learn
from the unconscious.”
“Which one?” I teased.
“Both,” he smiled. “The more we become aware of the contents
of the personal unconscious—lost memories, repressed ideas and
so on—the more is revealed of that rich layer of archetypal images
and motifs that comprise the collective unconscious. The effect is
to enlarge the personality. At least that’s what Jung believed, 118
and it is also my experience.”
“Mine too,” I said.
“Another corollary of the Brillig Principle,” 119 noted Norman.
“Whatever is experienced is true.”
“Yes,” agreed Brillig, “though experience is only the starting
point. What really matters is what you make of it.”
117 A way of assimilating unconscious contents (dreams, fantasies, etc.) through
some form of self-expression. See Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, pars.
706, 753-756, and my summary in Jung Lexicon, pp. 12-14.
118 Jung: “In this way there arises a consciousness which is no longer imprisoned
in the petty, oversensitive, personal world of the ego, but participates freely in the
wider world of objective interests. This widened consciousness is no longer that
touchy, egotistical bundle of personal wishes, fears, hopes, and ambitions which
always has to be compensated or corrected by unconscious counter-tendencies; instead,
it is a function of relationship to the world of objects.” (“The Function of
the Unconscious,” Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7, par. 275)
119 See above, p. 37.