Hi me, Silk: Well Jung, obviously, read what those had thought who came before him (we all do this) & drew his conclusions & perhaps
advanced some useful conjectures. We are of course grateful for the contributions of those who came before us as well as those who now
instruct us. I believe the best avenue of approach is to read what you can & draw your own conclusions & not to take as "gospel" anything any other says as concerns inexact studies which is exactly what the study of consciousness is. OK, I see it this way: We can, mostly all of us, agree that our physical bodies came from our mothers & fathers & that they came from their mothers & fathers & so on & so forth all the way back to the beginning. Now when it comes to accepting that our mentalities, talents, ect. are too an inheritance is a concept that many can't come to grips with so they cling to this free will business. I do not. As I see it the Collective unconsciousness or whatever you wish to call it is simply all the experiences of all your ancestors stored somewhere in your mind which you have very little, if any, access to though it does affect you. On occasion a person says they were reincarnated, that they lived before & were a general or some such thing who was stabbed to death & actually have a scar (birth mark) to prove it? What probably is occuring is an accidental "tap" into that subsconscious area & it could very well be that they did indeed have an ancestor who was a general who was stabbed to death? It's like our dreams being concocted out of past experiences, both ours & our ancestors, "pieces" of things that did happen put together as a total collage ( a dream) of something that never happened or maybe did? Given our current understanding of "things"anythings possible even this god story right along with the devil!
As far as the true self emerging, well, it doesn't have to "emerge" as what you see is what you get! You are you & thats that, nothing mysterious about it. I see it this way & I'm not religious: You & I & all that is are simply characters in a script, the author is the uncreated creator (god to many) & like any character in any script you do what the script calls for & this might even consist of you believing you have a free will when in fact you do not. It's not at all unlike being an actor, after a while the actor begns to believe he/she is the part they play?
You must admit it's most tempting! After having considered a myriad of opinions from Freud to Jung to Aristotle to Wittgenstein... ad infinitum
I have hung my hat on "Solipsism". There are just too many factors [heredity, luck, others actions plus the lottery of life (who you are born to & your genetic inheritance & where you are born { slums of India or
middle class Jew in Germany during Nazi era or a child born in 1980 to wealthy good looking intelligent parents living in a mansion in silicon valley} way too, too much that we have no influence over] Yes just puppets to be manipulated that we are! You don't know me, of course,
however I am a very reasonable person, cursed with an over abundance of common sense & I have lived very well & comfortable & have traveled all over this tiny pebble in the universe refered to as earth & I could so easy ascribe all my good fortune to my own effors but honesty forbids it! The "losers" will on the other hand cry "I never got a break I was unlucky at every turn!" Again: As I see it neither the "winners nor the losers" have jack to do with what happens to them though they may "believe" they do however the facts simply don't bear out their claims?
As concerns "consciousness" try this on for size: Imagine if you can "nothing" & in this vast "nothingness" exists "consciousness" ? OK, consciousness desires a physical experience so it forms matter around it, in our case human bodies with 5 senses & presto.............. And all "you" are is a very limited awareness which the "consciousness" has created to assist it in this experiment of experiencing the physical, in short you are but a helpless pawn along for the ride, the lottery of life & you may be comfortable or uncomfortable, handsome or ulgly, rich or poor, intelligent or not so & all this a "whim of this consciousness" which hails from nothingness & furthmore depending upon which physical experience it is bent on having at the time so shall you be, to be or not to be! And none dare call it treason!.............. chao/Silk
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