by Colin Wilson
In a book called Access to Inner Worlds I have described how a similar experience happened to an American living in Finland, Brad Absetz. After the death of their child through cancer, his wife collapsed into severe depression. She used to lie on a bed for hours, plunged in negative fantasies and self-reproaches; Brad Absetz lay beside her, waiting for her to emerge, so he could be there to help her. He lay in a state of vigilance, waiting for the slightest indication that she was 'coming round'; at the same time, he was physically relaxed. One day, as he lay there, he experienced an overwhelming sense of lightness and relief, almost as if he were floating up off the bed. This was his own equivalent of Jung's 'letting go'. And what now happened was that that 'other person' inside his head began to express itself. As he stoodby the buffet table, waiting to help himself to lunch, his arm began to twitch; he recognized this as a signal that it wanted to do something, and allowed it to reach out and take whatever food it liked. It took food that he would not normally have taken. This continued for weeks, and in a short time, he had lost weight, and felt healthier than ever before. One day his small daughter asked him to make her a drawing with coloured crayons; again, the hand began to twitch, and he allowed it to do what it liked. The result was an astonishing series of drawings and paintings, incredible 'psychedelic' patterns, every one totally different from all the others. His 'other self' took over and wrote poetry, while he merely looked on; it made metal sculptures; it performed his everyday tasks—like bee-keeping—in a simple, ritualistic manner that renewed his vitality. In the parliament of Brad's mind, the Member for the Unconscious had been given his proper say, and the result was a life that was in every way more harmonious and relaxed. He had, to a large extent, achieved 'individuation'.
Brad Absetz was in no danger of insanity when he 'let go', but he was under severe stress. His subjective mind, left to its own devices, showed him the way out of the impasse. (The method—of lying totally relaxed, but in a state of wide-awake vigilance—could be regarded as the simplest and most effective of all mental therapies.)
In 1913, Jung was in a rather worse state; so when he 'let go', the image-making powers of the subjective mind flooded into consciousness. He called the result 'active imagination', but we can see that it was not imagination in the ordinary sense of the word: the deliberate evocation of mental images or states. What Jung had achieved was a new balance between the ego and the unconscious, in which the unconscious was recognized as an equal partner. This explains why, from then on, Jung frequently had 'visions', like the one of the crucified Christ at the end of his bed.
We can at once see the difference between Jung's concept of active imagination and Rimbaud's. Rimbaud talked about surrendering to suffering and madness; but in effect, his ego remained in charge. He attempted a 'reasoned derangement of the senses' with drugs and alcohol, but since his ego was strong, these failed to produce individuation and 'access to inner worlds'. (I am inclined to regard his statement that he accustomed himself to seeing mosques instead of factories, etc. as wishful thinking, poetic license.) The real 'breakthrough' tends to occur in moments of desperation, or under extreme stress, and is a kind of inspired surrender. (Ramakrishna achieved a similar breakthrough when he attempted suicide with a sword, and was suddenly overwhelmed by a vision of the Divine Mother.)
Now we can begin to see why, although Jung regarded active imagination as the key to 'individuation', he said very little about it. There was very little to say. In the essay on 'The Transcendent Function' he writes: 'In the intensity of the emotional disturbance itself lies the value, the energy which he should have at his disposal in order to remedy the state . . . ' He adds: 'Nothing is achieved by repressing this state or devaluing it rationally.' In other words, the patient suffering from severe mental stress is already ideally placed to begin to develop active imagination. Jung's instructions follow:
In order, therefore, to gain possession of the energy that is in the wrong place, he must make the emotional state the basis or starting point of the procedure. He must make himself as conscious as possible of the mood he is in, sinking himself in it without reserve and noting down on paper all the fantasies and other associations that come up. Fantasy must be allowed the freest possible play, yet not in such a manner that it leaves the orbit of its object . . . by setting off a kind of 'chain-reaction' process. This 'free association', as Freud called it, leads away from the object to all sorts of complexes . . .
He utters a similar warning in the introduction he wrote to the essay in 1958: that 'one of the lesser dangers [of the method] is that [it] may not lead to any positive result, since it easily passes over into the so-called "free association" of Freud, whereupon the patient gets caught in the sterile circle of his own complexes . . . ' We can see that, for example, if Brad Absetz had lain on the bed 'free associating', he would never have achieved the break-through; what was so important was the combination of total relaxation with mental vigilance and alertness. 'The whole procedure', says Jung, 'is a kind of enrichment and clarification of the affect [powerful feeling-state], whereby the affect and its contents are brought nearer to consciousness.' In some cases, says Jung, the patient may actually hear the 'other voice' as an auditory hallucination—a comment that will convince split-brain psychologists that Jung is talking about the right and left cerebral hemispheres.
All this may leave readers who were hoping to learn how to practise active imagination feeling a little frustrated. Let us see if the matter can be clarified.
The essence of Jung's original experience—of 'waking dreams'—was the recognition of the reality of the 'hidden ally'. The 'letting go' that revealed this ally was a rather frightening process—like letting yourself fall backwards, hoping someone is standing there to catch you (a game many of us used to play as children). Once you have discovered that there is someone waiting to catch you, the fear vanishes and turns into a sense of confidence and reassurance.
We could say, then, that the correct starting point for active imagination is the recognition that there is someone standing there behind you. In a remarkable book called The Secret Science at Work, Max Freedom Long describes his own methods—based upon those of the Hunas of Hawaii—for contacting the 'hidden ally' (which he calls the 'low self'); Long's group began referring to the 'other self' as George, and found that it could be engaged in a dialogue (and could also answer questions by means of a pendulum).
Once the real existence of the 'other self' has been recognized, the next question is to tease it into expressing itself. In a letter of 1947, Jung explained his technique to a Mrs O-:
The point is that you start with any image, for instance just with that yellow mass in your dream. Contemplate it and carefully observe how the picture begins to unfold or change. Don't try to make it into something, just do nothing but observe what its spontaneous changes are. Any mental picture you contemplate in this way will sooner or later change through a spontaneous association that causes a slight alteration of the picture . . . Hold fast to the one image you have chosen and wait until it changes by itself. Note all these changes and eventually step into the picture yourself, and if it is a speaking figure . . . then say what you have to say to that figure and listen to what he or she has to say.
In his Tavistock Lectures of 1935 (Collected Works, Vol. 18) Jung gives an example of how one of his patients finally achieved active imagination 'from cold', so to speak. He was a young artist who seemed to find it practically impossible to understand what Jung meant by active imagination. 'This man's brain was always working for itself; that is to say, his artistic ego would not get out of the driving seat. But each time the artist came to see Jung, he waited at a small station, and looked at a poster advertising Mürren, in the Bernese Alps; it had a waterfall, a green meadow and a hill with cows. He decided to try 'fantasizing' about the poser. He stared at it and imagined he was in the meadow, then that he was walking up the hill. Perhaps he was in a particularly relaxed mood that day, or perhaps his artistic imagination
now came to his aid instead of obstructing him. (We can imagine his right brain saying: 'So that's what you wanted! Why don't you say so?') A waking dream took over. He found himself walking along a footpath on the other side of the hill, round a ravine and a large rock, and into a little chapel. As he looked at the face of the Virgin on the altar, something with pointed ears vanished behind the altar. He thought 'That's all nonsense', and the fantasy was gone.
He was struck by the important thought: perhaps that was not fantasy—perhaps it was really there. Now presumably on the train, he closed his eyes and conjured up the scene again. Again he entered the chapel, and again the thing with pointed ears jumped behind the altar. This was enough to convince him that what he had seen was not mere fantasy, but a genuine glimpse of an objective reality inside his own head, 'access to inner worlds'. This, says Jung, was the beginning of a successful development of active imagination.
What becomes very clear here is that there is a certain 'turning point', and that this is the moment when the subject suddenly realizes that this is not mere personal fantasy, but that he is dealing with an objective realty—the reality we occasionally encounter in dreams, when some place seems totally real.
The basic procedure, then, seems to be: lie still—as Brad Absetz did—and become perfectly relaxed and yet fully alert. Place yourself in a listening frame of mind, waiting for 'George' to speak. That is to say, assume that there is someone there who has something to communicate, and ask him to go ahead and say it. If what he 'says' is an image, then contemplate it as you might contemplate a painting in an art gallery, and ask him, so to speak, to go on.
Julian Jaynes's book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind may be found a useful accessory in this quest for 'the turning point'. Jaynes believes that our remote ancestors of four thousand years ago did not possess 'self-consciousness' in the sense that we do; they could not decide a course of action by 'questioning themselves', because their minds were turned outward, so to speak. Decisions were made for them by 'voices' that came into their heads, and which they mistook for the voices of the gods; in fact, it was the other half of the brain, the 'other self'. Later, Jaynes believed, war and crisis forced man to develop self-awareness, so he no longer had need of auditory hallucinations. We may object to this theory on the grounds that modern man is still 'bicameral' (with two minds), and that therefore it seems more probable that ancient man was 'unicameral', in a relaxed, 'instinctive' state of oneness with nature, like a cow. But this objection makes no real difference to the substance of the theory, which springs from the scientific recognition that we actually possess a 'second self' in the brain, and that thousands of people experience this second self in the form of auditory and visual hallucinations—what Jung called 'projections'.
In her book Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination, the Jungian psychotherapist Barbara Hannah insists that ancient man's encounters with 'God' (in the Old Testament, for example) are instances of active imagination: that is, of the action of the 'bicameral mind'. She cites two highly convincing examples of the 'auditory method of active imagination' from 2200 B.C. and from A.D. 1200, then reprints an important modern document, the account of a patient called Anna Marjula, of how she was cured through the practice of active imagination. The case helps to throw light on what Jung meant by active imagination.
Anna Marjula was the daughter of a lawyer, and Jung thought the origin of her neurosis could have been sexual—seeing her father masturbating when she was a small girl; the father later revealed a certain physical interest in his daughter. She was a shy, nervous child, tormented by feelings of inferiority, and the death of her mother was a shattering experience. She was a fine musician, and wanted to become a concert pianist. Working for her examination, at the age of twenty-one, she became over-tense and spiritually exhausted. On the night before the examination, she had a 'vision'. A voice told her to sacrifice ambition, and to be perfectly willing to accept failure. (This, we can see, was the best advice her subjective mind could have offered her.) Her willingness to accept possible defeat brought religious ecstasy; at this point, the 'voice' told her that she was not destined to become famous herself, but that her real vocation was to become the mother of a man of genius. She should look around for someone who would be the right father for a man of genius, and offer herself to him without physical desire. If she could succeed in conceiving a child without any feeling of pleasure, the result would be a man of genius.
In fact, the patient never met the right man, and as she entered her forties, a conviction of having 'missed the boat' caused severe psychological problems. She was fifty-one when she became Jung's patient.
The analyst—Jung's wife—suggested that the original 'vision' was a deception of the 'animus', and that the patient should try to use active imagination to approach a more positive female archetype, the Great Mother. Clearly, the patient already had a predisposition to 'visions', and her psychological tensions provided the psychic energy for active imagination. The result was a remarkable series of conversations with the 'Great Mother', in which the patient experienced the Mother as another person—as Jung experienced Philemon. The eventual result, according to Barbara Hannah, was a happy and serene old age.
Another Jungian analyst, J. Marvin Spiegelman, set out to conquer the techniques of active imagination at the age of twenty-four, with 'fantasies' of a cave, in which he encountered a mother, daughter and a wise old man. One day, a knight appeared and carried off the mother and daughter. The knight explained that he had certain tales to tell, and that there were 'several others in his realm' who also wished to dictate their stories. Spiegelman then spent several years taking down various stories dictated by the knight, a nun, a nymphomaniac, an old Chinaman, and various others: these were published in four volumes. Clearly, Spiegelman had used the same technique as Brad Absetz—allowing the 'other self' to overcome its shyness and express itself—and the results were in many ways similar.
In the fourth volume of the series, The Knight, Spiegelman makes an observation of central importance: that the successful practice of active imagination 'regularly leads to the occurrence of synchronistic events, in which one is related to the world in a deep, mystical way'. What happens, Spiegelman suggests, is that the inner work somehow changes one's relationship to the world. He then tells the important story of the Rainmaker, originally told to Jung by Richard Wilhelm. Wilhelm was in a remote Chinese village that was suffering from drought. A rainmaker was sent for from a distant village. He asked for a cottage on the outskirts of the village, and vanished into it for three days. Then there was a tremendous downpour, followed by snow—an unheard-of occurrence at that time of year.
Wilhelm asked the old man how he had done it; the old man replied that he hadn't. 'You see', said the old man, 'I come from a region where everything is in order. It rains when it should rain and is fine when that is needed. The people are themselves in order. But the people in this village are all out of Tao and out of themselves. I was at once infected when I arrived, so I asked for a cottage on the edge of the village, so I could be alone. When I was once more in Tao, it rained.'
By being 'in Tao and in themselves', the old man meant what Jung meant by individuation. That is to say, there was a proper traffic between the two selves—or the two halves of the brain. The people in the rainless village were dominated by the left-brain ego—which, while it is unaware of the 'hidden ally', is inclined to over-react to problems. This in turn produces a negative state of mind that can influence the external world.
This throws a wholly new light on the idea of synchronicity, and also of magic. One could say that, according to the Chinese theory, the mind is intimately involved with nature. Synchronicity is not therefore the active intervention of the mind in natural processes: rather, a natural product of their harmony. (So when we are psychologically healthy, synchronicities should occur all the time.) Our fears and tensions interfere with this natural harmony; when this happens, thing
s go wrong.
We can see that this also changes our concept of the nature of active imagination. It is not some kind of 'reasoned derangement of the senses', directed by the ego. It is an inner harmony based on the recognition of the 'hidden ally', which leads to a process of cooperation between the 'two selves',
But here again, a warning must be uttered. A remarkable American physician, Howard Miller, has pointed out that human beings already possess a form of active imagination. I can close my eyes and conjure up a beach on a hot day, imagine the warm sand under my feet, the sun on my face, the sound of waves; then, in a split second, I can change to a winter day on a mountain, with snow underfoot and on the branches of the trees, and a cold wind an my face . . . But Miller points out that the 'control panel' of such imaginings is the ego itself. I decide on the change of scene, and my imagination obliges.
What Miller is saying, in effect, is that the right brain is the orchestra and the left brain is the conductor. If, for example, I relax and read poetry, or listen to music, I can induce all kinds of moods, and eventually achieve a state in which I can change my mood instantly: I can turn, let us say, from Milton's L'Allegro to Il Penseroso, and conjure up with total realism a summer scene with merrymakers and then the 'dim religious light' of abbeys and churches and pinewoods. The right and left brains can eventually achieve the same relationship as a great conductor with his orchestra—the orchestra that has come to respond to his most delicate gesture. But such a state of harmony depends on the initial recognition that I am the conductor. I must take up my baton, tap the music stand, and say 'Gentlemen, today we do the Jupiter Symphony . . . ' The greatest danger of active imagination is that the subject should assume it means handing over his baton to the orchestra—which is obviously an absurdity. Active imagination is a state of cooperation in which the ego must remain the dominant partner.