A Creation in Time
Jungian Synchronicity, a Very Special Dream and My New Favorite Podcast
The Podcast
I discovered a wonderful new podcast this week. It's called This Jungian Life and it's hosted by three real-life Jungian analysts. Each episode presents a topic, and ends with the analysis of a listener's dream. I have really enjoyed the dream segments and like doing my own analysis to compare to that of the hosts. I also like the topical portion of the show. A lot.
The hosts are articulate and knowledgeable and so unexpectedly funny I found myself laughing out loud as I listened. More importantly, I feel I've already learned things from them.
I have heard several episodes (including two on the shadow which were excellent) already but the episode I want to talk about in this post is called Unlock the Power of Symbols (video follows). The guest in this episode was Murray Stein, author of Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction and I was so impressed with him that I bought his book the second the show was over.
When I was in my New Age phase I talked about synchronicities a lot even though I didn't really understand them and to be honest I'm not sure I understand them now. But when Stein quoted Jung as saying that a synchronicity is an act of creation in time I felt like I was being shown another, more theoretical perspective.
And an example followed.
The Spirit Dream
So there I was, doing the dishes and listening to the podcast and wishing I could ask Murray Stein to help me make sense of the Spirit Dream.
I was thinking that I wouldn't even have to get him to take on the whole dream. I would just ask him to help me figure who the lady in blue was and why she seemed so important—and what was up with the whole color thing (read The Spirit Dream in full if you'd like more context).
I have often thought that the spectrums of blues I was shown in the dream exceeded anything I've ever seen with ordinary waking vision. Sometimes I have wondered if there isn't something reminiscent of an NDE in that, but I've never been sure about any of it.
The interplay of red and blue in the Spirit Dream seemed significant to me from the start and I have always supposed that color was the key to the dream.
Murray Stein
I was thinking about these things and how nice it would be if Murray Stein could tell me about my dream, when he answered a question about the difference (or relationship) between a symbol and an archetype and said the following:
So there are archetypes and there are archetypal images... [and] Jung makes a very important distinction (you can read about this in a paper he wrote called the Nature of the Psyche in Volume 8 and I use that a lot in my book Jung's Map of the Soul).
He [Jung] lays out a spectrum [and] says the psyche is like a spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared.
On the infrared side it disappears through a psychoid membrane into the body, into physiological processes and there's an interplay between body and psyche—the psychosomatic interplay. The psyche can affect the body. The body can affect the psyche through that psychoid membrane.
He says on the other end of the spectrum there's the ultraviolet end of the spectrum that's blue—the psyche disappears again through a psychoid barrier or membrane into he says "what I can only call Spirit,.." and that's where the archetype exists.
And the archetype emits... [and] influences the psyche. The archetype influences the psyche by giving it images so when you have powerful images coming into your dreams, for instance, we call them archetypal images [or] Big Dreams that are related to mythology and fairy tales and all that.
The archetype... beyond the psyche in the… spiritual world is emitting some energy and it's coming into the psyche and then it takes the form of a couple of things: It can be an image or it can be a big idea [that] can be an inspiration, you know, [and] suddenly [the] aha light goes on you understand something.
So… the psyche disappearing into the spirit world on the one hand... [and] the psyche disappear[ing] into the material world on the other hand... Now there's where Jung tried to tie that together—the material world and the spirit world— in his theory of synchronicity: Something happens in the material world and in the psychic world at the same time. It has meaning.
It delivers meaning.
Does it ever.
The Video
This is the video of that episode. I prefer to listen via podcast but it's nice to have the video to share, You can hear the content I quote above at the 35 minute mark but I encourage you to listen to it all. It is incredible.
My Takeaway
Does the Spirit Dream all make sense to me now?
No. Not yet and maybe not ever. But I feel I'm much closer to understanding the central mystery of the dream: The identity of the woman in blue and why she appeared to me.
I will be returning to the Spirit Dream again better prepared to understand it. And I will be reading Stein's book and, hopefully, some of Jung's as well.
As always, there is a lot more to learn but I believe that the overlap of This Jungian Life and the Spirit Dream was a meaningful thing.
I won’t be ignoring it.
This post first appeared in the Mystic Review (mysticreview.com)
You can read the Spirit Dream in full here: The Spirit Dream
You can buy Murray Stein's book Jung's Map of the Soul on Amazon.
You can listen to This Jungian Life on most popular podcast apps and on YouTube.
Fascinating topic! Thank you, Barbara 😇💕