Dr Carl Jung, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, founder of analytical psychology, and spiritual master, was no less than a prophet. I have just finished reading his ‘The Red Book, Liber Novus’. It’s over 20 hours on Audible. Liber Novus means ‘New Book’. Even by itself, The Red Book’s backstory is a remarkable tale. The Red Book was not available to the general public until 2009, despite the fact that it is currently regarded as one of Carl Jung’s most significant writings. Some critics have suggested that Carl Jung was experiencing a psychosis at the time he was writing The Red Book, which explains his lucid-dreams. The genius lies in that he continued to write prolifically despite his mental illness, and maybe even because of it. The works that sprung from its contents show his true spiritual mastery and indeed it contains the nucleus of Jung’s later works. It was here that he developed his principal theories of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation, that would transform psychotherapy from treatment of the mentally ill into a means for the higher development of the personality, which gives it its massive and universal appeal, at a time when mental illness is the norm and the only way to cope with such dysfunctional Dystopian world. If the greatest works by one of history's true spiritual masters was done during a period of mental illness perhaps we need to stop calling it illness and we collectively need to stop stigmatising it.
As Sara Corbett wrote in the New York Times, “The creation of one of modern history's true visionaries, The Red Book is a singular work, outside of categorisation”. As an inquiry into what it means to be human, it transcends the history of psychoanalysis and underscores Jung's place among revolutionary thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, Kafka, Orwell and, of course, Freud.
'The Red Book, Liber Novus' by C G Jung
Delve into the captivating world of Carl Jung’s 'The Red Book: Liber Novus,' where the depths of the human psyche and the realm of the unconscious come to life. Jung considered the years he dedicated to pursuing inner images as the most crucial time of his life, from which everything else flowed. This enigmatic stream from the unconscious flooded him, leading him on a spiritual transformative journey of Self-discovery and integration of his psyche. I invite you to do the same, if you have the endurance for it.
“The Red Book” represents Jung’s personal descent into the underworld, akin to the ancient Egyptian practice of opening the mouth of the dead. It is his “Book of the Dead,” requiring the confrontation of many unanswered questions.
The publication of “The Red Book” in 2009, almost a century after its inception, sparked both intrigue and debate. Although opinions vary on whether Jung would have chosen to publish the book during his lifetime, its significance to the psychologist and spiritual seeker cannot be understated. Revealed to only a select few confidants and family members, it was a formative period for Jung, exposing him to the depths of the collective unconscious and the forces of the deepest parts of the mind. This experience profoundly influenced his subsequent work, shaping his theories and concepts concerning the unconscious and the repressed aspects of the human mind.
Jungian psychology, at its core, has two fundamental goals. Firstly, it seeks to integrate and understand the deepest, most repressed aspects of the human mind, bringing the subconscious into the conscious, paving the way for individuation - the process of becoming Self-aware of and embracing one’s true Self. Secondly, it aims to navigate this profound exploration without being consumed by the subconscious forces uncovered along the way. It provides a psychological and spiritual container and lens through which the true Self can be comprehended and clarified.
While not intended to be a religion, Jungian psychology serves a similar purpose by addressing the functions of the human need for religion, mythology, and the transcendental. As such, it is a deeply spiritual work. It acts as a bridge to religion, encouraging psychology to explore and understand these aspects consciously. Jung hoped that by bringing awareness to the role of religion within humanity, his psychology could help foster a healthier and more mindful relationship with religious and transcendent experiences in our culture. I would say that Jung was more spiritual than religious, and when asked if he believed in God by a BBC journalist said:
BBC Interviewer: "Did you believe in God?
Jung: “Oh yes."
BBC Interviewer:"Do you now believe in God?"
Jung: "Now... Difficult to answer: I know. I don’t need to believe…I know.”
Carl Gustav Jung 'Face to face' in his own words (BBC 1959). John Freeman and his team filmed the interview at Jung's house at Küsnacht (near Zurich, Switzerland) in march 1959, it was broadcast in Great Britain on October 22, 1959. This film has undoubtedly brought Jung to more people than any other piece of journalism and any of Jung's own writings. Freeman was deputy editor at the "New Statesman" at the time of the interview. They formed a friendship, that continued until Jung's death.
Immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of Jungian psychology, where the exploration of the unconscious meets the quest for Self-discovery, integration, and understanding. Uncover the transformative power of “The Red Book” and the enduring legacy of Carl Jung’s profound insights. Part mythological, part dream journal, and part genius ravings similar to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, “The Red Book” defies easy explanation.
Jung believed that what came up in the unconscious was not random, that meaning could be extracted from it, but that analysing that meaning could be very difficult, as the archetypes and symbols of the collective unconscious are not known to most.
I find that as I dig deeper I am more in touch with what I can only call my soul, the deepest, quiet part of me, the intuitive sense I have about myself and the world. Most of us think of our egos as ourselves. The ego is who we think we are. The soul is who we truly are. The ego is the conscious self, the part of us where we think and feel. But our thoughts and feelings are just our thoughts and feelings, and mostly they are not even our own thoughts. We all take them so seriously. How can we not? It is an immediate, visceral experience to have them. But they are the cause of much despair and suffering. There is more to us than our petrified ego. It is the deep wells of the unconscious which I speak of. Sometimes you can see it in dreams. Sometimes you can have an intuitive sense or voice directing you. I find great wisdom in that voice. I ask much of it too. Sometimes in my deepest meditations, I will ask that inner voice, my soul, “What would love do?” It always answers.
So, what does my soul need these days? Quiet. Music. The sound of raindrops. Reading. Conversation. A nice run most days. Yoga. Nature. Writing. My Deep Coaching work. All my clients, who I adore. My family. A few true friends. Meditation. Not much else. I have all these things now. I am truly happy and free in many ways I have never been. My life for however long I have left is to write, to create and serve as much as I can, and to notice it all, one moment at a time.
Jung thought that many people would gain from a similar voyage into the depths of their own soul, despite the risks involved. But it’s crucial to remember that Jung wanted everyone to choose their own route and did not intend for anyone to follow his. Our own journey is tailored to us. Carl Jung had cautioned against imitating others, and also forewarned against the temptation to ‘find your way’ in religious Gods and ideologies.
Jung makes an effort to reunite with his soul in The Red Book.
Jung distinguished between two dimensions: The ‘spirit of the depths’ and the ‘spirit of the times’. The dimension in which we exist can be used to understand the spirit of the times. We follow the rules, work a job, and attend school. We believe we know who we are and what we want. The spirit of the times is never static; it is continuously taking on new forms. Time passes, the world changes, you change, laws exist and then vanish, wars are fought, and values shift. Everything that occurs in this dimension can be readily explained and rationalised. This is the domain of the ego. Its language is the language of fear.
However, the ‘spirit of the depths’ is timeless and eternal. That means that it does not alter and it embraces all past, present, and future events in the now, the ‘holy instant’. There is no value in anything. It is impartial and does not judge or objectify. This is the domain of the soul. Its language is that of unconditional love and joy.
If you are looking for your soul, you need to look extremely deeply; you should not only think about your life right now, but also about everything that has ever happened in the past as lessons; you should also avoid trying to objectify or judge your soul by viewing it in terms of good or bad. The key is to surrender completely to your soul: Stop fighting the Universe; relax into the flow state of surrender. It feels so good and is all powerful.
Some could attempt to argue that your soul has existed and always will exist in this sense. You could only become more conscious of your soul. Looking within is how you find your soul, a notion that both Jung and Buddhists seem to support.
Jung believed that you could never locate your soul in material possessions. If you’re looking for your soul, you should seek within, try not to label or criticise what you find, and avoid objectifying or judging it. It seems like Jung made the case that you ought to communicate with your soul and allow it to communicate with you in the same way that you would with others during meditation and mindfulness.
Discovering your soul is not always going to be a very simple task. You may need to get rid of all the ideas you had about what your soul is since they may be a product of this era’s ego. You have to empty your cup of your ego so that it may be filled again. We now know that in order to uncover your soul, you must look within. If you fail to do this and place an excessive amount of importance on outside factors, you may well never find your soul. Do you really want to realise this on your death bed?
Jung contended that this will have some grave ramifications and he had maintained that you should regard your soul as a living, independent entity rather than as something to be interacted with like an object.
In the year 1897, at the tender age of twelve, the future psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung was visiting the picturesque cathedral located in his childhood home of Basel, Switzerland, when he was struck by a waking dream that would come to fundamentally frame the way he viewed spirituality. The cathedral roof had recently undergone restoration, and this young visionary son of a pastor saw the way in which God on high showed his favour to the beautiful building mankind built to house Him: the Almighty appeared on a golden throne above the cathedral and delivered upon it a bowel movement of divine size and force, omnipotent faeces which splintered the roof and reduced the church to rubble. Here, for the first time, Jung felt a personal connection to a living God, outside of and bigger than his father’s dead religious buildings and books. This conception of God as a visceral, alive, and most importantly totally personal - yet still all-encompassing - BEing is the underlying notion found throughout his first and most closely guarded synthesis of philosophical psychology, The Red Book.
The Red Book was born as an expression of the tension that surrounded Jung around the time of its inception, both culturally as the tense presence of war’s preceding spectre loomed menacingly over Europe prior to the outbreak of the first world war, and personally as his now infamous friendship with Dr Sigmund Freud bent and then broke under the strain of an ever-widening gap between their conceptions of the unconscious aspects of the human mind. It began in a particularly haunting dream in the fall of the year 1913, in which Jung saw Europe consumed by a tsunami of blood, in hindsight seeming to forecast the gruesome 1914 to 1918 conflict yet to come. Unable to shake the feeling of premonition and impending destruction, Jung felt compelled to engage with, explore, and analyse the meaning of this and other recurring messages his psyche seemed to foist upon him with impetus, in much the same way he had analysed the dreams of patients alongside Freud.
This inward journey of self-analysis would take the form of repeated, intentional lucid-dreaming over the course of sixteen years; direct conversation with the fantastic manifestations of the deepest parts of his own mind, unadulterated confrontation with and interpretation of the symbolic scenes, images, and ideas these inner daemons presented to him within the spiritual realm of the psyche, to Jung an equally real and parallel world. These experiences laid the bedrock upon which Jung rested his understanding of the human mind and theories thereof from then on, later saying of such dreams: “That was the primal stuff that compelled me to work on [psychology], and my work is a more or less successful attempt to incorporate this incandescent matter into the worldview of my time. The first imaginings and dreams were like fiery, molten basalt, from which the stone crystallised, upon which I could work.”
It’s fitting, then, that the two conceptual essences which Jung - at first broadly - describes being confronted by are those of the worldly, rational ‘spirit of this time,’ and the transcendent, primordial ‘spirit of the depths,’ The spirit of this time extols to Jung the virtues of humanity’s current perceptions and wisdom, insisting on the orderly dogmas of both science and Christianity, recognising “The greatness and extent of the supreme meaning, but not its littleness.” The spirit of the time divides supreme meaning into two halves: One, a God-image of accepted moral right and order, the other, a rejected devilish shadow of evil and chaos. To Jung’s confusion and horror, the spirit of the depths insists that the true Godhead is not this God-image, but instead is the gestalt sum of both the image and its shadow; that a true God is not only made up of the exceptional, the great, and the good, but also encompasses the banal, the miniscule, and grotesque aspects of life and existence, saying “The supreme meaning is great and small, it is as wide as the space of the starry Heaven and as narrow as the cell of the living body.” This God-image shadow dichotomy as described in the voice of the spirit of the time, forms the basis of understanding for much of the dreams and images it precedes, which often take the form of a comparison between a scientific thinker or traditionally Christian person - to whom Jung at first relates, but later comes to see the folly of - and a hedonistic or pagan figure - who at first repulses Jung, before he realises they are to be understood, related to, and accepted. Through the recognition and integration of such duality, Jung comes to understand the transcendent, all-encompassing nature of the ‘spirit of the depths.’
Jung is presented with and guided along this inward path by his soul, at first just felt as a shadowy presence chased through a spiritual desert and always ever so slightly out of reach, eventually fully manifested as the Anima, the incarnation of the fundamental feminine aspect of Jung’s inner Self, a separate being which exists in all the spaces and embodies all possibilities Jung himself does not evince in life, most obviously evident in her femininity (a woman, according to Jung, would have a masculine Animus). To most easily understand Jung’s conception of the soul, one need only consider the nearly ubiquitous outward projection of the lack of connection to it: The romantic notion of a ‘soulmate,’ the conceptualised ideal of a partner who completes us, who fits in all the gaps of our heart, with whom one and one make not two but simply an even greater one. Jung’s Anima is not the pure, angelic figure one might imagine of such a soul, however, she is often mocking, scornful, cruel, and deceitful, pitilessly drawing Jung through the very pits of Hell itself for the sake of conceiving a living God inside himself.
The forms and figures of this Dantean journey are myriad, ranging from strange and intriguing caricatures of mythological people and places to the unspeakable and sickening, but a common thread of meaning seems to persist subtly throughout: Jung must recognise that the ‘Truth’ he currently lives by and understands is a half-truth, inexorably linked to and dependent for existence upon its inverse compliment. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated in a dream Jung would later call the “Mysterium Encounter,” in which he finds himself at the bottom of a dark primordial crater, confronted by the three inhabitants of the columned manor he finds there. The first of these figures, a robed, wisened old man with an air of sagacity, introduces himself as the prophet Elijah of the bible’s Old Testament; the second is an animal familiar, a black serpent who exists always between the other two, who can only be adequately explained after understanding it’s companions. The third is the prophet’s daughter, blind but also beautiful, and Jung is horrified and confused when the prophet identifies her as Salome, the licentious ‘harlot’ of biblical fame, infamous for asking Herod for the head of John the Baptist after being spurned by the holy man. Jung’s dismay deepens when Salome declares her love for him, worsening still when the Elijah chastises him for not reciprocating her feelings.
Jung is left reeling until the ‘spirit of the depths’ reveals to him the divine reality that underlies Elijah, Salome, and the serpent that stands between them. The prophet and Salome represent twin aspects of his deep, primordial, pre-conscious self, the unconscious precursors from which conscious thought is born. Salome is a representation of feeling, the libidinal drive of a sensing being to seek that which is pleasurable. Elijah corresponds to forethinking, the ability of a being to perceive, to order and differentiate the chaotic sensual information into coherent associative concepts. Jung underlines the inexorable symbiosis of these two, pointing out that the blindness of Salome relates to the inability of feeling to conceive of the form of what it senses, therefore unable to see its way to pleasure. Likewise useless on its own, forethought unwed to feeling stands still, with no incitement to bring form out of formlessness. Feeling is awareness of the now, forethought is the memory of past states of feeling and the use of that memory in the anticipation of the future. These are ancient and universal forces which exist fundamentally at the core of all living beings.
The serpent which stands between forethinking and pleasure is the transcendent property, the necessary demarcation of the two for the sake of their existence, separate from but related to both. It is the essence which makes the thinking person shun their passion, and the feeling person reject their thought, as Jung says “If I look across from forethinking to pleasure, I first see the deterrent poisonous serpent. If I feel from pleasure across to forethinking, likewise I first feel the cold cruel serpent.” This serpent is kin and kind to the one found in Eden that imparts upon mankind the ‘knowledge of good and evil,’ the fundamental aspect of differentiation between subjective and objective principle; this serpent is also further illustrated in a later dream in which a great and immortal god from the east - the land of the subjective - is poisoned by the objective knowledge of mortality Jung imparts upon him, as if bitten by the serpent in his Achilles heel, his unknown weakness. The transcendent essence that exists between such opposites is represented as reptilian and venomous because each is a perfect inversion, refutation, and death to the other, alien and unrelatable to its counterpart as the reptile seems to the mammal.
Later in the journey, Jung meets perhaps the most important figure of the Red Book, who embodies the acceptance and embrace of existence’s essential dichotomies. He is the shrewd but loving magician Philemon, who teaches Jung the secret to the art of magic: That magic can neither be learned, taught, nor understood, as Jung says that “The practice of magic consists of making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.” It is further described as the ability to “Unite the two conflicting powers of [the] soul and keep them together in a true marriage until the end of [one’s] life.” In many ways, Philemon represents a refutation of the predominant Christian theology, that identifies dualities like that of good and evil as universal, concrete absolutes that exist outside the Self, imposed on the individual externally. Philemon’s teachings could be best related to those of Gnosticism, which emphasise a personal, inward focus to spiritual growth and understanding and a fundamental concept that Truth is something that wells up from within, not that which is dispensed from without. Gnosticism says that humans are divine souls trapped in the ordinary physical (or material) world.
In the capstone of the Red Book, Philemon outlines the framework of this philosophy in seven sermons preached to the ghosts of the dead - but still unfulfilled - spiritual seekers, who continue to exist and yearn for Truth within the collective unconscious of man. Throughout these sermons Philemon describes the nature of the Pleroma, the underlying and all-encompassing unknowable medium which represents both emptiness and fullness, both nothing and everything. It is indescribable and “Fruitless to think about… for this would mean self-dissolution,” but is necessarily mentioned in order to recognise the relativity essential to every duality and understand that the serpentine essence of differentiation is the essential component of mankind. To conceive of existence implies nothingness as a matter of course, likewise the conception of a pure god engenders its opposite devil. The Pleroma is the prior state of undifferentiation and also the null that results from the collision of two opposite forces which perfectly cancel each other, the beginning and end of creation, the Alpha and Omega.
The resemblance of Jung’s inner journey and the Truths found along the way within his unconscious to those found throughout much of Eastern philosophy is uncanny, especially in his conception of the Pleroma as compared to the Tao, or the Buddhist conception of Nirvana reached through self-dissolving Enlightenment. It is no wonder then that Jung felt the journey complete when his friend and colleague Richard Wilhelm translated and then passed along an ancient Chinese text entitled ‘The Secret of The Golden Flower’, Jung saying of the text in the epilogue of the Red Book: “There the contents of this book found their way into actuality, and I could no longer continue working on it,” The Red Book was and still remains over a hundred years later a work far beyond the scope and understanding of the times, much like the primordial, unconscious, and eclectic spirit of the depths whose Truth it contains.
Very few books I’ve read have entered into the dark crevices of the soul, the places I - and maybe all of us - are terrified to enter. In the darkness are our demons. We think our demons are outside of us. We see our demons in other people in all the ways we dislike and judge. But the demons of course are just us, the parts of ourselves we want to reject: Our shadow. We can all be so petty and small and weak and ugly. In the dark reaches of my psyche, I am all those things. My shadow is just as dark as yours. To be alive means to suffer. The key is to find meaning in that suffering. But somehow this is ok. I am both my darkness and my light all at once. It could be no other way.
Very few works of art and creativity make room for a spirituality based on one’s personal, felt experience of the divine. So much of modern religion is about laws and precepts.'The Red Book' is not that. It is a deeply personal work, one that wrestles with the questions of life in poetic, mythical language. It’s hard to rank, but it feels like one of the top 5 most important books I’ve ever read. It is something that has changed me irrevocably. It is in my Suggested Reading List.
Namaste.
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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for four years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.