Having read David Johnston’s presentation on the Mirror of Tomorrow blog (http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2010/2/1/4438893.html) there can be no doubt that he is one of the more erudite students of Carl Jung’s work. I think it is fair to say that his exposure to Sri Aurobindo’s knowledge, as far as he has taken it, has provided unique insights into the structure of Jung’s vision that one cannot glean from Jung alone. There are however a number of fatal flaws in his analysis of Jung in the light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s teachings on the Integral Yoga, flaws that proceed from a ‘partial’ view of the lines of that yoga and a truncated vision of the Supramental Descent.
In an earlier posting I mentioned that one of the critical differences between Sri Aurobindo and Jung was that Sri Aurobindo came to fulfill a divine ‘evolutionary action’, an action that the Mother described as being ‘direct from the Supreme’. In his paper David Johnston has provided us with a means of insight into that ‘action’ by including the legendary dialogue between Osiris and Maria Prophetissa which reveals the central axiom of Alchemy; "One becomes Two, Two becomes Three, and out of the Third comes the One as the Fourth". This alchemical formula, grounded in the quaternion model, precisely describes the stages or octaves of the Supramental descent through a living bridge made up of the four members of the Solar line; Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, Thea and the Fourth, Kalki, who is Sri Aurobindo returned - ‘the One as the Fourth’. This formula describes, among other things, the descent of the Transcendent Divine into what Thea calls the ‘Absoluteness of Immanence’ or hidden foundation of the Supermind. It is also the formula which clarifies the occult process by which Spirit becomes Matter; how Brahman, ‘THAT in its transcendent form’ becomes the Vedic Skambha ‘THIS in its immanent form’. Thea’s recovery of this Vedic knowledge lost for millennia has given us the means of connecting Spirit and Matter in a seamless continuum which resolves for all time, the paradoxes and irreconcilables of an old spirituality. It is this very formula that provides the basis of a Supramental Gnosis - a knowledge Sri Aurobindo described as being, ‘…free from doubt, self-evident, self-existent, irrefragable and absolute’.
We can follow this process of descent and unveiling in the lives of each member of the Solar Line. One may observe, for example, that Sri Aurobindo's actual work on the spiritual plane is almost never revealed. The Mother's work on the occult planes is somewhat clearer yet even she was not inclined to explain the details of what she did and saw. It isn't until the Third level of the descent that these details become revealed in their entirety because that is the nature of the Third – ‘precision in truth’. With Thea’s level of the work, we are able to perceive this precision in its myriad aspects. Take for instance the Supramental Time Vision that Sri Aurobindo introduced in the last chapter of ‘Synthesis of Yoga’. While he knew that Time was the remaining aid needed for the effectivity of the Supramental yoga, it was not until the Third level that the details of this synthetic Time Vision are finally revealed. The ability to see with such detail at this level comes about because the action is observed from the most intimate dimension the human consciousness can experience, the 'center' or individual Soul. But this is most certainly NOT the Soul postulated in the psychology of Carl Jung, nor can it be obtained through his Individuation process.
What I find lacking in David Johnston’s presentation is a realistic view of the Becoming. Search as we may, there is nothing of the New knowledge and precision in detail to be found in Jung’s work. It is primarily a product of the Overmental Plane, full of Gods, Archetypes and speculative Visions, incapable of providing access to a genuine integral experience. Moreover, it leaves the student stranded ‘up there’ on the Transcendent/Mental-Cosmic planes and unable to link the Vedic Truth-Consciousness to the Earth where it must finally be grounded if any meaningful transformation of Matter is to occur. When I read postings by David Johnston or RY Deshpande, erudite as they may be, they do not even begin to acknowledge or describe the sublime purpose and perfect control in the unfolding of events accompanying the Supramental Creation. And perhaps worse, even though they have been given indisputable evidence to the contrary, they continue to mislead their readers by suggesting that there are no Third and Fourth levels of the Supramental Descent. Clearly these wisemen would prefer to talk and sleep but for those who are tired of playing in the antechambers of the higher mind and aspire to a more satisfying non-speculative realization, I will leave you with this quote from Thea’s New Way:
‘May we not seek miracles…let us rather have Realization. This is the solid way. Let us not see visions or lights or etheric forms…let us BE light, let us SEE IN UNDERSTANDING, let us be the ‘new seeing’.Thea, Preamble to The New Way, Vol. 1 & 2
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In the last few days, a friend and colleague, Lori Tompkins, posted an extraordinary essay entitled, ‘The Infinite and the Detail’ (http://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2010/01/infinite-and-detail.html) I would highly recommend this essay to those interested in learning more about the Supermind and the details of its manifestation.
