Tantric Techniques (17 page)

accorded to them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath all the padding one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is why the office—or whatever their outer husk may be—is so attractive: it offers easy compensation for personal deficien-cies.

The basic problem is that one has lost a healthy respect for the need to mediate between the conscious and the unconscious, thereby (in one version) inflating the importance of the ego:
a

To the extent that the integrated contents are
parts of the self,
we can expect this influence [of assimilation] to be considerable. Their assimilation augments not only the area of the field of consciousness but also the importance of the ego, especially when, as usually happens, the ego lacks any critical approach to the unconscious. In that case it is easily overpowered and becomes identical with the contents that have been assimilated.…I should only like to mention that the more numerous and the more significant the unconscious contents which are assimilated to the ego, the closer the approximation of the ego to the self, even though this approximation must be a never-ending process. This inevitably produces an inflation of the ego, unless a critical line of demarcation is drawn between it and the unconscious figures.

The problem of inflation occurs whether the ego is drowned in the larger self or the larger self is pretentiously assimilated to the ego:
b

It must be reckoned a psychic catastrophe when the
ego is assimilated by the self
. The image of wholeness then remains in the unconscious, so that on the one hand it shares the archaic nature of the unconscious and on the other finds it-self in the psychically relative space-time continuum that is characteristic of the unconscious as such.…Hence it is of the greatest importance that the ego should be anchored in the world of consciousness and that consciousness should be reinforced by a very precise adaptation. For this, certain virtues like attention, conscientiousness, patience and so

a
Collected Works,
vol. 9.ii, para. 43-44.

b
Collected Works,
vol. 9.ii, para. 45-46.

Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation
71

forth, are of great value on the moral side, just as accurate observation of the symptomatology of the unconscious and objective self-criticism are valuable on the intellectual side. However, accentuation of the ego personality and the world of consciousness may easily assume such proportions that the figures of the unconscious are psychologized and the
self consequently becomes assimilated to the ego
. Although this is the exact opposite of the process we have just described it is followed by the same result: inflation.

Correspondingly, inflation is of two varieties, negative and positive, the former being when the ego is subsumed in the collective unconscious and the latter when the ego takes too much to itself. Jung says:
a

With the integration of projections—which the merely natural man in his unbounded naïveté can never recognize as such—the personality becomes so vastly enlarged that the normal ego-personality is almost extinguished. In other words, if the individual identifies himself with the contents awaiting integration, a positive or negative inflation results. Positive inflation comes very near to a more or less conscious megalomania; negative inflation is felt as an an-nihilation of the ego.

Jung frequently makes clear his position that one must negotiate the passage between the Scylla and Charybdis of the needs of unconscious contents to manifest and the imperative of effective individuation. For example, he says,
b
“The unconscious can only be integrated if the ego holds its ground,” and:
c

If our psychology is forced, owing to the special nature of its empirical material, to stress the importance of the unconscious, that does not in any way diminish the importance of the conscious mind. It is merely the one-sided overvaluation of the latter that has to be checked by a certain relativization of values. But this relativization should not be carried so far that the ego is completely fascinated and overpowered by the archetypal truths. The ego lives in

a
Collected Works,
vol. 16, para. 472.
b
Collected Works,
vol. 16, para. 503.
c
Collected Works,
vol. 16, para. 502.

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Tantric Techniques

space and time and must adapt itself to their laws if it is to exist at all. If it is absorbed by the unconscious to such an extent that the latter alone has the power of decision, then the ego is stifled, and there is no longer any medium in which the unconscious could be integrated and in which the work of realization could take place.…Against the dae-monism from within, the church offers some protection so long as it wields authority. But protection and security are only valuable when not excessively cramping to our existence; and in the same way the superiority of consciousness is desirable only if it does not suppress and shut out too much life. As always, life is a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis.

He identifies the two perils eloquently:
a

Even when the conscious mind does not identify itself with the inclinations of the unconscious, it still has to face them and somehow take account of them in order that they may play their part in the life of the individual, however difficult this may be. For if the unconscious is not allowed to express itself through word and deed, through worry and suffering, through our consideration of its claims and resistance to them, then the earlier, divided state will return with all the incalculable consequences which disregard of the unconscious may entail. If, on the other hand, we give in to the unconscious too much, it leads to a positive or negative inflation of the personality.

Without such care, a person is subject to psychological disaster, primarily the loss of the powers of discrimination:
b

An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of consciousness into

a
Collected Works,
vol. 16, para. 522.

b
Collected Works,
vol. 12, para. 563.

Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation
73

unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the
sine qua non
of all consciousness.…It seems to me of some importance, therefore, that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a psychic non-ego. This mental operation has to be undertaken if we want to avoid a threatening inflation.

Jung’s view is that certain contents, although associated with the ego merely by the fact of being in the collective unconscious, are definitely non-ego and must be left so. Otherwise, one is swallowed up and destroyed by them:
a

…they are meant to fulfill their earthly existence with conviction and not allow themselves any spiritual inflation, otherwise they will end up in the belly of the spider. In oth-er words, they should not set the ego in the highest place and make it the ultimate authority, but should ever be mindful of the fact that it is not sole master in its own house and is surrounded on all sides by the factor we call the unconscious.

One can approach only with caution:
b

The victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value, the capture of the hoard, the invincible weapon, the magic talisman, or whatever it be that the myth deems most desirable. Therefore, whoever identifies with the collective psyche—or, in terms of the myth, lets himself be devoured by the monster—and vanishes in it, is near to the treasure that the dragon guards, but he is there by extreme constraint and to his own greatest harm.