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This is the final
stage of the individuation process and, says Jung, most people never reach it.
Jung sometimes called this the stage of 'self-realization'; sometimes he used the trem to cover
the whole of the individuation process. For the sake of clarity we might be tempted to call this
final stage that of 'complete self- realization'; and there would be nothing wrong in that, so long
as we remebered that it is a stage, albeit the last one, and that within this stage there is still some
room for growth and development.
Stage four consists of encountering what Jung calls 'the Self'. The self has to be distinguished
from the ego. The ego is the conscious mind. The self is the total, fully integrated psyche, in
which all opposing or conflicting elements are united and co- ordinated. Bear in mind what Jung
says about the relationship between the conscious and unconscious, the unconscious contains
the opposite characteristics or capabilities to those that are evident at the conscious level of the
personality (e.g. if you are the extrovert type your unconscious will be introvert). At this final
stage of individuation conscious and unconscious become so thoroughly integrated into one
harmonious whole that those things that were previously opposites and therefore - potentially,
at least - in conflict are transformed.
In the case of (complete) self-realization, a person's consciousness will no longer consist
osimply of thinking (reasoning, 'working things out in the head') and fantasizing (just letting one's
thoughts wander); it will include the immediate knowledge of reality which was formerly the
unconscious alone. In other words, the person's total psyche is now conscious and is now
doing the knowing and the feeling and the experiencing.
Another way of putting this is to say that you are fully conscious of your body, and your body is
fully conscious. And the consequence of this is a radical change in your view of life, your values
and goals. You will feel completely at ease in your body. You will feel joyful and loving. You
are now self-centered, no longer self-centered. In particular, you will find such bliss
in sheer
cosnciousness and in just being, that you will cease to worry about achieving. You now have all
you want.
Jung described this state of self-realization as follows:
As Jung describes it, this last stage of individuation resembles the state of consciousness
reached by mystics through prolonged meditation. (What, after all, is meditation if not an
exploration of one's total psyche?) Jung's 'Self' is a transpersonal reality - that is, although it
is
the ultimate reality of your own personality, it is not just that; it is something bigger, it is the
ultimate teality of everything and everyone. It is what people have called God or - in the
Eastern mystic- meditative traditions - the Old behind the Many, the one underlying reality of
which all existing things are manifestations or (partial) embodiments.
Do not suppose, however, that self-realization means being lost in or swallowed up by some
greater reality (which might be suggested by the Indian image of a drop of water rejoining the
ocean). Nor does self-realization mean being swamped by the unconscious. (That would be a
state of psychosis, a state of 'possession'). Rather, it means that you are now fully conscious,
but you realize that 'your' consciousness is also the consciousness that is everywhere, in all
things (what in mystic- meditative traditions is sometimes referred to as 'cosmic consciousness').
The self is the ultimate in your experience of the psyche.
[psyche - Greek word for 'soul'. The 'totality' of the conscious and unconscious life. The mind
considered as an organic system reaching all parts of the body and serving to adjust the total
organism to the needs or demands of the environment}.
Experiencing the self means knowing all there is to know about yourself, your life, your destiny,
your meaning, and the meaning of life in general.
I have mentioned how, in this final stage of self-realization, opposites are brought together and
thereby transformed.One particularly interesting aspect of this concerns the pair of opposites
that we call good and evil. The contents of our unconscious may at first appear to us (that is, to
the conscious ego) as evil - dark and menacing. But these same parts of the unconscious are
capable of enriching and enlarging our personality. That is what they are for! The unconscious
holds all those possibilities that will allow the individual to have a full life. Whether the contents
of the unconscious are good or evil depends on whether or not they are integrated, taken
seriously, respected and allowed appropriate expression in our conscious life.
The fourth stage of individuation is where the integration and mutual penetration of conscious
and unconscious becomes complete. It is therefore the stage at which all that was (or appeared
to be) evil has now become (or is now recognized as) good. If you like figurative and dramatic
language, you can say that at this final stage of self-realization the Devil becomes God.
Alternatively, we might say that the Devil is now seen to have been God all the time, although
we didn't realize it before. Yet another way of expressing the same point is to say that the Devil
no longer exists - because there is no longer anything evil in the psyche, and therefore no need
to project that evil on to some external being.
When we come to look at symbols of this fourth stage of the individuation process, we see that
most of them allow different interpretations: they can be symbols either of the final stage of self-
realization or of the whole process of individuation from stage one to stage four, or any of those
four stages. This is not so bewildering as might at first appear. Any partial exploration of the
unconscious is really a (partial) self-realization; and, as we have seen, Jung himself gives the title
'self-realization' not only to the last stage of individuation but also to the whole four stage
process.
Jung has been criticized for being too rigid and doctinaire in dividing the individuation process
neatly into four parts. The number four (and multiples of it) is a well-known symbolic number,
signifying completeness, wholeness. Is that why jung divided the individuation process into four
stages? He was certainly fond of fourfold divisions. He saw four primary functions in the human
psyche: thinking, intuition, feeling, sensation. He claimed that every uninter-rupted dream has
four parts: setting the scene; stating the problem; movement towards a climax; the solution of
the problem.
I would advise against a slavish acceptance of Jung's four stages. For some people stages one
and two will coincide: their first awareness of the shadow may be accompanied by a feeling of
their soul-image. Similarly, some people will find that stages three and four merge to some
extent: the encounter with the deep wisdom and power in their unconscious will be
simultaneously an awareness that the ultimate basis of their psyche is God, or that their psyche
has a cosmic - not merely individual - dimension. And even stage four is only a completion of
continued exploration of one's shadow, and the shadow does not fully disappear - is not fully
integrated - until what Jung describes as stage four is attained.
The symbols of stage four commonly have their origin in mythology and religious ritual. Some
express the ultimate oneness of the individual soul and God: for example, the 'birth' of a divinity
- perhaps in the form of a child - in your soul, or psyche; or a holy being residing in the depths
of yourself - perhaps sitting on a throne; or a bridal couple, or a couple engaged in the sexual
act; or a figure that has both male and female physical characteristics. These last two symbols,
however, may also represent the integration of the soul-image (the 'marriage' of the masculine
and feminine sides of the psyche) or the general inter-penetration of the conscious and
unconscious parts of the psyche.
You will have to judge for yourself which stage of the individuation process is symbolized by
these images if and when they appear in your dreams. This is not just a matter of where you
think you are in the progress towards self- realization; a symbol may be telling you, not where
you are, but where you should be going.
Any death-and-resurrection symbolism - a flood, or an immersion in water, being 'swallowed'
by the sea (at sunset) and arising again at dawn, or the kiss of life raising a corpse, etc. - may
be understood as representing the descent of the conscious ego into the unconscious and rising
again as a new, transformed being. Again, whether such symbolism in your dreams means that
you are near the end of the process of self- realization or that you are just beginning - or being
invited to begin - must be left for you to judge.
Self-realization may be symbolized by other transformation processes, like the Ugly Duckling's
transformation into a beautiful white swan, or the changing of a frog into a handsome prince.
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1. The Number
