All my alarm bells are ringing, while reading that Kingsley, whose literature can be found in New Age and esoteric shops, adopted Carl Gustav Jung as subject of his writings. Putting his whole work in a moreover mystic context.
For shure Jung dived deep into mythology and religion of different cultures, yes catholic believes, as well as Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and archaic ideas to get hints on and awareness of what he called collective unconscious. But first of all he was a scientist at the beginning of the last century, an explorer of human psyche and innovator of healing methods.
He is the founder of analytical psychology and he practiced his methods. Psychoanalysis is one of the most important methods today to heal people that suffer from neurosis, psychosis and depression. Without him, Freud and his disciples, Reich was already mentioned, help in psychological crisis would maybe determined in taking pills or putting them in straitjackets, like we did for a long time. Up to the 1970s locking them up, was still the way to do it, in Europe as well as in the US.
Some may be alienated by his unconventional affair with two women. Sexcult??? Or his way to keep a live in solitude in his house in Küsnacht on the shore of Zürichsee to get deeper in exploring psychological experience by taking himself as psychotherapist and patient at the same time. He wrote and painted his Red Book there, he invented the same idea of the Shadow there, the dark spots of our selfs. That may sound like occultism, but it’s not because his aim was to refine his healing methods, to go even deeper into mankind’s soul.
I hope that Kingsley is able to draw a portrait of that genius, besides of exploiting him as a prophet. The idea is ridiculous.
Some of my thoughts on the term for his tobacco box: Habakkuk, a yes many identify him as that prophet that struggled with god. But there is another narrative in Christian, Jewish and Islamic culture that I found much more interesting. It’s the narration of „Daniel in the Lion’s Den“. Here Habakkuk feeds the seer Daniel.
Maybe Jung just showed some humor, the tobacco box providers him in the same way as prophet Habkkuk the seer Daniel not with food, but with the narcotic drug tobacco. Maybe the drug made him get relief from the creatures of his dreams and insights he was into while introspecting. I’m just speculating. Obviously he was addicted to smoking.
It’s a lousy arrangement of the author Kingsley to leave the pipe smoking reader alone on this topic. Maybe someone is better advised to get in touch with Jung by dipping their toes in the vast amount of serious philosophical and scientific literature.
And here is something that illuminates Jungs relationship to God. Yes, he said he believed in God. Not that important for me. Sorry, only subtitles available for Americans: