bridget ·
Over 120 years since “The Father of American Psychology,” William James, wrote Varieties of Religious Experience, mysticism remains on the periphery, as psychology recovers from an imbalance toward pathology. Mainstream theory and therapies have done incredibly well at mapping the shadow. Much less attention is paid to the light, the potent force known as the superconscious.
There’s an understandable tentativeness when psychology enters so-called spiritual territory. The stumbling block with integrating the superconscious is its metaphysical associations. Mysticism, the idea that union with the divine is an experiential possibility, contradicts the dominant ideology of materialism.
And yet, to comprehend the light, you have to see beyond the individual, and beyond the biological. To avoid losing credibility or coming across as unscientific, mysticism has to be implied or whispered, to rock the boat without capsizing. Pioneers have dared to risk capsizing the boat, including James and Jung. But each had to speak the language of the dominant paradigm, and insights are lost in translation, ink diluted to soften the blow.
Only full comprehension of light and dark, and its repercussions on the psyche, will support people through the varieties of religious experience. This is a modest attempt to provide an overview with the framing of unconscious and superconscious, including the gifts, hazards, and qualities of both.
The Unconscious and the Shadow
“You must understand that when you approach the unconscious you are dealing with one the most powerful and autonomous forces in human experience.”Robert A. Johnson
The shadow is an aspect of the personal unconscious that contains the repressed and rejected parts of the self, which hide behind the scenes, but influence behaviour. The unconscious, by default, is outside of conscious awareness. There’s a function to this process; imagine trying to live in the world if you had access to every memory, registered every sensation, every thought — all at once. You’d be rendered catatonic.
In Jungian psychology, the ego is directly related to consciousness. It has many functions, not least bridging consciousness and unconsciousness. The function of a healthy ego is to adapt. Repression, however, forces psychic content into the unconscious, blocking the natural flow of psychic energy. The ego denies its presence. Through its need to escape, that energy is “projected” onto “the other” — people, situations, groups, the world, or cosmos at large.
Projections have to be reclaimed, as unclaimed psychic content contributes to psychological, emotional, and spiritual turmoil. Repressed content has to be carefully brought into conscious awareness, understood, digested, re-integrated into the ego, the conscious sense of self. This is the journey toward wholeness. For Jung, a highly developed person isn’t aware of everything all at once, but has a harmonious relationship between conscious and unconscious.
Many people end up in therapy because repressed contents have taken on a life of their own, and become intrusive and destabilising. While for many this is spontaneous, certain practices poke the contents of the unconscious. In attempting to extract honey, the beehive is shaken, potentially inducing swarms of repressed content into the fresh air of consciousness. As Jungian analyst Johnson warns, the unconscious shouldn’t be messed with.
Caught in the desire for spiritual revelation, practices such as meditation, psychedelics, or breathwork release the grip on the unconscious, allowing content to surface into the conscious mind. As trauma-informed therapy illustrates, if this happens all at once, it can be too much to hold, re-traumatising or sparking an emotional crisis. Working through deeply ingrained samskaras takes courage and dedication. The light, and the dark, can transform or harm. It’s crucial to discern the difference.
The Superconscious and the Light
Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli’s model of psychosynthesis is an explicit attempt to integrate the superconscious. Created in the 1960s, he defines the superconscious as “higher potentialities which seek to express themselves, but which we often repel and repress.” Assagilio’s other term, higher unconscious, points to the overlap of Jung’s model and the golden shadow, the Earth-shattering potentials we repress through fear of their magnitude.
My understanding is that Jung’s unconscious captures the superconscious; they’re qualities that aren’t easily accessed by the conscious mind, aren’t integrated into the ego, and are responsible for numinous experiences. These experiences are religious or spiritual, exquisite and unique from the day to day, and can induce awe or terror in equal measure, but either way, catalyse transformation. Jung went as far to say:
“The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numino…