Marie Louise Von Franz: it is only in old age when one looks back that one sees that the whole thing had a pattern.

From these amplifications, you see that the woven linen or carpet, with its designs, is often used as a symbol for the complex symbolic patterns of life and the secret designs of fate.

It represents the greater pattern of our life, which we do not know as long as we live it.

We constantly build our lives by our ego-decisions and it is only in old age when one looks back that one sees that the whole thing had a pattern.

Some people who are more introspective know it a bit before the end of their lives and are secretly convinced that things have a pattern, that they are led, and that there is a kind of secret design behind the ephemeral actions and decisions of a human being.

Actually, we turn towards dreams and the unconscious because we want to find out more about our life pat- tern in order to make fewer mistakes and not to cut with our knives into our own inner carpet, fulfilling our destiny instead of resisting it.

This purposiveness of an individual life-pattern, which gives one a feeling of meaningfulness, is very often symbolized in the carpet.

Generally carpets, especially oriental ones, have those complicated meandering patterns such as you follow up when in a dreamy mood, when you feel that life goes up and down and along and changes around.

Only if you look from afar, from a certain objective distance, do you realize that there is a pattern of wholeness in it. Marie Louise Von Franz, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, Pages 6-7

Marie Louise Von Franz: Ghosts usually rattle their chains in the attic and walk about over our heads.

Speaking in spatial terms, if we are objective we have to admit that there is a field of the unconscious both above and below us.

This same duality applies to the symbolism of the house.

The cellar often represents the unconscious in some form, the area of the drives, the instincts;there are innumerable dreams in which coal is in the cellar and there is a fire, or awful animals are in the cellar or

For instance, a crazy person, overwhelmed by the unconscious, has "bats in the belfry" or "mice in the attic."

So up in the attic, where it is dark and full of cobwebs and we are a bit crazy, there is just as much a realm of unconsciousness as in the cellar. People frequently dream of thieves getting in from the roof or of demons sitting up there and taking off the tiles, and so on.

We must therefore look at the above and the below from a different standpoint and see if there is any kind of qualitative difference between representations of the unconscious powers above and the unconscious powers below.

There are exceptions, but it can be said that in general the above is associated with what is masculines—ordered, light

and sometimes spiritual—and the below with the feminine—fertile, dark (not evil; there are no moral designations in the original mythological counterpositions), chaotic, and the realm of the animals.

The sphere above is connected with birds and angels—with winged beings which have to do with the spiritual world.

For instance, if in a dream something comes from below, you might expect it to come up in the form of an emotion or a physical symptom such as sleeplessness, or some affective disturbance of the sympathetic
nervous system.

Or it comes in the form of synchronistic occurrences in the outer world.

If an invasion from the unconscious comes from above, it can take the form of an enthusiasm for Communism or Nazism; such an "above" unconsciousness erupts into the system in the form of a collective idea. If it is characterized as positive, then it can be said to be the Holy Ghost; if it is considered negative, then there are the winged demons, bats in the belfry, and other pernicious winged creatures—that is, destructive ideas.

Whether constructive or destructive, such ideas have a strong collective energy of their own.

Dynamic representations belong to the "above" aspect of the unconscious and the emotional, instinctive representations to its "below” aspect. Marie Louise Von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, Pages 13-14.

Marie Louise von Franz Selections from Number and Time

Marie-Louise von Franz, Number and Time

SELECTIONS


“In the final analysis the idea of an unus mundus [one world] is founded, as he [Jung] says:

“on the assumption that the multiplicity of the empirical world rests on an underlying unity … . [E]verything divided and different belongs to one and the same world … . [Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, pars. 767-770]

“… Jung stresses, however, that there is little or no hope of illuminating this undivided existence except through antinomies. But we do know for certain that the empirical world of appearances is in some way based on a transcendental background. [Footnote: In the sense of ‘transcending consciousness.’ I will always use the word ‘transcendental’ in this sense.] It is this background which, suddenly as it were, falls into our conscious world through synchronistic happenings.” p. 9

“Although the nonperceptual potential continuum or unus mundus appears to exist outside time, certain dynamic manifestations of it break through into our ordinary temporal sphere in the form of synchronistic occurrences.” p. 11.

“It is not by chance that these models frequently take the form of double mandalas. They all represent attempts to throw light on the transcendental unity of existence in both a timeless and a time-bound aspect. The fact that more differentiated models of the unus mundus are double mandalas and that they are especially liable to appear when the problem of time and synchronicity becomes constellated, is presumably related to the function of number two as a threshold phenomenon.” p. 95

“It is as if we are more inclined to ask the unknown ‘What shall I do?,’ while the East prefers the question: ‘To what total order does my conduct belong?'” p. 120

“Jung used the expression unus mundus to designate the transcendental unitary reality underlying the dualism of psyche and matter. The idea of such a unity behind all existence is based on an archetypal foundation. The expression unus mundus originated in medieval natural philosophy, where it denoted the timeless, preexistent, cosmic plan or antecedent world model, potential in God’s mind, according to which he realized actual creation. Joannes Scotus Erigena, for instance, describes the process of creation (in imitation of Dionysius the Areopagite) as a transition of the excellence of God’s seminal power from a ‘nothingness which lies beyond all being and non-being,into forms innumerable.’ This God accomplishes by means of his Wisdom (through the Son ‘through whom he knows himself”). These ‘causae primordiales’ know themselves, for they were created in Wisdom and remain eternally in her. The Sapientia Dei [wisdom of God] or Sophia is a kind of primal unity, a uni-form image which reproduces herself, yielding a multitude of primal forms, which abide simultaneously in the unity. These ‘primal forms’ possess self-consciousness; Joannes Scotus Erigena also calls them the ‘rationes rerum,’ ‘ideae,’ or ‘prototypa’ of all existent things. Hugo de St. Victor likewise termed the Sapientia Dei the ‘exemplar’ of the universe, or the ‘archetypus mundus’ in God’s mind, in whose pattern the visible world was created. …35

“A notion similar to that of medieval theologians is also to be found in the works of certain alchemists. But they did not only conceive of the unus mundus as the initial plan of the universe existing in God’s mind; for them it was also identical with the goal they were seeking, the lapis. It, like the res simplex or the philosophers’ stone, was the one world. According to Paracelsus’ pupil, Gerhard Dorn, the highest grade of the alchemical coniunctio consisted in the union of the total man with the unus mundus.

“The medieval philosophers merely ascribed potential reality to the ‘one world’ … ; Jung also stresses the fact that he views the unitary reality underlying synchronistic phenomena as a ‘potential’ reality ‘in so far as all those conditions which determine the form of empirical phenomena are inherent to it.’ [CW 14, par. 769] The phenomena of synchronicity, however, represent sporadic actualizations of this unitary world. In contradistinction to the medieval
speculations, synchronistic phenomena provide us, as Jung emphasizes, with empirical evidence of the existence of such a unus mundus.” [CW 14, pars. 767f.] pp. 171-174

“[S]ynchronistic events appear to be linked up with an individual’s inner development and in some way dependent on it.” p. 190

“In Mysterium Coniunctionis, [CW 14, par. 662] Jung made the important statement that the mandala is the inner psychic counterpart, and synchronistic phenomena the para psychological equivalent, of the unus mundus.” p. 195

“[T]he unconscious actually appears to contain a kind of ‘knowledge’ which is not identical with ego consciousness. In his paper ‘On the Nature of the Psyche,’ [CW 8] Jung took great pains to demonstrate that the archetypes of the unconscious possess a kind of ‘quasi intelligence’ which is not the same as our ego consciousness. Jung applied the term ‘luminosity’ to this quasi-consciousness of the archetypes, in order to differentiate it from the ‘light’ of ego consciousness. The same phenomenon can be observed from another angle when a synchronistic occurrence takes place. Inner and outer facts then behave as if their meaningful relation were in some way known, but not to our personal consciousness.

Differently expressed, a ‘meaning’ manifests itself in synchronistic phenomena which appears to be independent of consciousness and to be completely transcendental. [CW 8, par. 948] It consists of representational images … , and its appearances seems to be connected with the momentary activation of an archetype manifesting itself simultaneously in physical and psychic realms in the form of acausal orderedness. [CW 8, pa. 965]

The meaning that unites these inner and outer happenings consists of knowledge unmediated by the sense organs. This quality of knowledge is what Jung calls ‘absolute knowledge,’ since it seems to be detached from our consciousness. [CW 8, par. 148] In other words, although the initial significance of a synchronistic event can only be experienced subjectively, the fact of a meaningful coincidence on psychic and physical levels suggests that the meaning may also have been originally present in the objective event itself; something rational or similar to meaning may inhere in the event itself. [CW 8, pars. 921-923]

“The idea that meaning lies concealed in events themselves was, as Richard Wilhelm has shown, predominant in earliest Chinese culture. We also come across it in the West, in Heraclitus’36 conception of logos, to mention one example. Another version of this view is to be found in the Aristotelian idea of the nous poietikos, an active intelligence inherent in the physical universe which is secondarily manifest in the human soul as the ‘natural light’ and is capable of influencing man’s thinking.

“In his work on synchronicity, Jung cites a number of other thinkers, both ancient and medieval, who believed in … a correspondentia or sympathy of all things, whose ‘meaning’ lay hidden in objective phenomena of the outer world and could be investigated with the help of mantic procedures. These are the residue of a primitive magical thinking which has been more or less eliminated in the development of our more exact modern sciences. In the course of the development of these sciences, however, the baby has, as so often before, been thrown out with the bathwater, so that the directly observable manifestations of ‘absolute knowledge’ in the collective unconscious have also been thrown away.” pp. 199-201

Marie-Louise Von Franz: Dreams give the Naskapi complete ability to find his way in life

This inner center is realized in exceptionally pure, unspoiled form by the Naskapi Indians, who still exist in the forests of the Labrador peninsula.

These simple people are hunters who live in isolated family groups, so far from one another that they have not been able to evolve tribal customs or collective religious beliefs and ceremonies.

In his lifelong solitude the Naskapi hunter has to rely on his own inner voices and unconscious revelations; he has no religious teachers who tell him what he should believe, no rituals, festivals, or customs to help him along.

In his basic view of life, the soul of man is simply an "Inner Companion, " whom he calls "my friend" or Mista’peo, meaning "Great Man."

Mista’peo dwells in the heart and is immortal; in the moment of death, or shortly before, he leaves the indi- vidual, and later reincarnates himself in another being.

Those Naskapi who pay attention to their dreams and who try to find their meaning and test their truth can enter into a deeper connection with the Great Man.

He favors such people and sends them more and better dreams.

Thus the major obligation of an individual Naskapi is to follow the instructions given by his dreams, and then to give permanent form to their contents in art.

Lies and dishonesty drive the Great Man away from one’s inner realm whereas generosity and love of ones neighbors and animals attracts and give him life.

Dreams give the Naskapi complete ability to find his way in life, not only in the inner world but also in the outer world of nature.

Thel help him to foretell the weather and give him invaluable guidance in his hunting, upon which his life de- pends.

I mention these very primitive people because they are uncontaminated by our civilized ideas and still have natural insight into the essence of what Jung calls the Self. Marie-Louise von Franz, Man and His Symbols, Pages 161-162