The path of individuation, as C.G. Jung describes it, does not exclude a life in the world but rather adds a new quality to it. It integrates the outside and the inside, uniting opposites and thus opening up the essence beyond.
Individuation or becoming oneself, is the fundamental idea in C.G. Jung’s analytical in-depth psychology. Jung understands this as the development process that leads to the actual core of the human being, the SELF, as he calls it. However, psychology and individuation should not be equated. Psychology can only be the beginning of the path to individuation, only a tool for a temporary psychological pacification so that the SELF can finally unfold.
The psyche is our biologically created centre of consciousness. Jung distinguishes it from the SELF, the actual core of the human being. This core being must be revived so that it can take over leadership in the life of the human being.
The SELF is the instance of consciousness that stands hidden behind the psyche, embracing it without connecting or interfering with its movements. It could be said that it is the silent and neutral observer of our ego and emotional states. The psyche determines thoughts, feelings and actions with all the conflicts, contradictions, paradoxes and tensions that are experienced in everyday lives. The most important characteristic of the psyche is its identification as ego. It can only experience itself through that identification. It has its own individual view of things. Identification makes it difficult to tolerate other perspectives and thus limits itself. On the other hand, identification is necessary in order to accept this life.
Therefore, humans face a paradox at the moment of their birth. They need an identity in this world, but at the same time it binds them and determines their actions. This is where individuation begins for Jung. It also includes freeing oneself from the limitations of identification that result from the respective inner psychological structure. The psyche is nevertheless the prerequisite for a conscious development of the SELF. However, the SELF grows beyond the psyche. The perspective of consciousness thus undergoes a fundamental structural change.
Although psychotherapy can lead to a change in perspective, it can only help to replace one perspective perhaps with a better or more appropriate one. The person thus remains trapped in the haze of its own limitations. This is so because this modified perspective is in turn accompanied by an identification that will serve as a new truth and a new basis for a future life. Something truly new cannot develop if the starting point in the structure of the human psyche has not been abandoned. In this case a new starting point is required, a point outside of the change of perspective, outside of any construction of reality in our psyche, in order to experience what lies behind it, what constitutes the reality of the human being at a higher level.
“Give me a fixed point in Space and I will unhinge the world,” Archimedes said 2,200 years ago.
For this reason, the cultural anthropologist Jean Gebser (1) spoke of a necessary leap in consciousness. He called it the leap into “A-perspectivity”, that humanity must make to ascend into a new dimension of consciousness. This “freedom from all perspectivity”, as Gebser also calls it, does not exclude different perspectives, it elevates them to a state that does not stop at a single perspective. It goes beyond, uniting all opposites and realities.
The person who decides to take the path of individuation becomes a stranger in this world in a certain sense, as he consciously turns inwards to discover the SELF within himself, instead of seeking the causes and cures for the difficulties in his life outside. But this alienation is special: not in the sense of renunciation, asceticism or social withdrawal. For it does not exclude a life in the world, but adds a new quality to it. It is an integration of the outside and the inside, uniting opposites and thus opening up the essence beyond. This can happen when the psyche no longer identifies exclusively with the outside, but when it withdraws, becomes neutral and no longer loses itself in judgment, exclusion and blame. This brings a different, very subtle focus into life: it is “in the world” and at the same time “not of the world”. “In the world” – as a life in the here and now, being in the moment, and “no longer of the world” – as resting in the SELF that no longer needs identification, but at the same time does not exclude its possibility to enter into a relationship with the outside. It is becoming one with oneself, a whole. Everything that had previously taken the place of the SELF, the enticing diversity of the world, loses its grip on the human being.
Being-in-the-world becomes even more intense on such a basis of foreignness: free from attachment to the past and to the future, grounded in the here and now. In addition, the highest aspect of the soul, the SELF-not-of-this-world, that has now taken over the leadership of the personality, radiates in the new way of thinking, feeling and acting. In this way, the feeling of being a stranger in the world initially leads us on a journey to ourselves, to our SELF.
What happens when the individuation process is complete? Then the alienation is not present any more. The soul with its highest aspect, the SELF, is now at home in both worlds, the earthly and the soul world. It can now turn to the earthly sphere and work in it without the limitations of identification. It is “in the world and not of the world”. It is free from being bound to the world and can still live in it for the blessing and benefit of many. Above all, it can help others find solid ground..
C.G. Jung says: “But what does the Self gain? It becomes apparent[…], that by taking hold of us it also enters into ourselves and thus passes from the […] state of unconsciousness into that of consciousness[…]. What it is in the unconscious state, we do not know; but now we know that it has become a person, it has become ourselves.” (2) In the next step, the soul-SELF can open itself to the connection with a dimension of consciousness existing above it, the All-One.
We live on the surface of existence and have the opportunity to become aware of the depths of our being. Let us use this opportunity to allow the outside and inside to come together to form a new wholeness.
Jean Gebser: Ursprung und Gegenwart, Teil 2 (The Ever-present Origin, Part 2): Die Manifestation der perspektivischen Welt, Versuch einer Konkretion des Geistigen, München: dtv, 2. Auflage 1986
Blauth/Bahemann/Gawlitta/Haase/Packhäuser: WERDE DER DU BIST (Become who you are), Rosenkreuz Verlag, Birnbach 2024
