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THE SELF
by
Vera von der Heydt
It is about thirteen or fourteen years ago that I started to speak on the subject of the self;
it would be reasonable therefore to suppose that this talk had become routine, or at any
rate an easy task for me. Actually, it has not. Imagine that someone would be asked to
speak about life, love, God: do you think that would become easier as the years go by?
One looks again, one looks anew and sees different things though one knows that they
were always there, and one sees things differently. Life in its totality, love in its entirety,
God the all express totality, and Self is totality.
Self is a concept, Jung's most difficult and complex one because it is totality. Self is an
experience, emotional, religious, shattering and healing. Self is a discovery of sense and
nonsense - of life and death - of the pairs of opposites, and of the validity of this and
that.
Self, das Selbst, is the term for totality which Jung took from the Hindu notion of
Brahmah/Atman in which all opposites, all ambiguities of life are explicitly included.
Self is Brahmah, the great transcendental power, Creator of all life in all its aspects: Self
is also Atman the centre of individual existence which can be experienced.
Jung has been accused of being unnecessarily unclear about the concept of the Self, of
being inconsistent about its role, and too negative about the one-sidedness with which it
is projected only on light aspect: in a sense splitting the totality Jung was wrestling with
the paradox. The misgivings, and uncertainties which surround the word self are not
only due to Jung: selfish, self-conscious, self-opinionated are just a few words which
have negative connotations. Confusion has also been created by religious teachings: one
is exhorted to deny, to give up, to let go of self, or to recognize it as illusion. Sometimes
the ego is meant, not the "true" self but, what is the difference between them? And how
can one give up something that one does not know that one has?
In Jung's terminology Self is the central archetype from which all other archetypes
evolve. Self is the centre of the individual, the dynamic nucleus from which
consciousness and the ego emerge. Self is at the centre between the world of inner
reality, the collective unconscious, the vast hinterland of human evolution, and of outer
reality, the comparatively limited world of consciousness. But Self is also the circle, the
circumference which provides the protective boundary.
It is difficult to imagine 'totality', the totality of a human being until one thinks of a
newborn baby: a baby comes into this world with all its physical, physiological
dispositions, and with all environmental influences and conditionings that are its lot, that
are the lot of every individual. Physically one grows, but psychologically one develops
through the impact, the clash between inner and outer reality, and the necessity to learn
to repress.
"Civilization is based on repression", Freud wrote. Eventually awareness becomes
consciousness: the ego is its centre. The function of the ego is to respond, relate, mediate
between the inner and outer realities, between the collective conscious and the collective

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unconscious; self and ego are intimately connected and interdependent, and they
influence one another. The interaction and interplay between self and ego constitute the
uniqueness of the individual personality: the self enriches the ego as it is the
inexhaustible source of all creativity, all life-giving activity, all spiritual longings, and
the urge for completeness, wholeness and union; and the ego all through its limited lifespan may, can, does change its attitude to life and by doing so transforms the whole
personality - the self is transformed.
However, there are pitfalls, and obstacles arise between self and ego; the greatest is
one's desire to remain unconscious, in blissful ignorance, in darkness as opposed to the
light of exploration. With a glimmer of the awareness of wholeness one faces the truth
of how much one clings to illness, neurosis, hurts, weaknesses: how little one is
prepared to let childhood go and enter womanhood or manhood. One sees this clearly in
others, but in oneself?
Childhood is not easy for anyone. It is the time in which ego gradually consolidates.
Education is geared to emphasize collective conscious values. As one grows up one
experiences conflict, conflicting emotions, conflicting duties, and the necessity of
choosing between opposites, good and bad, good and good. Jung was aware of time and
timing; first the opposites have to be accepted as belonging to consciousness; this leads
away from the self, as the focus is on the world of the ego which is appropriate in the
first half of life. In the second half of life one has to re-connect with the self and learn its
manifestations how the opposites and polarities can be transcended; or, possibly, united
which is the ultimate goal in the process of individuation when self and ego co-operate
with one another: the ideal goal which is never reached. The journey is important, the
quest is important; whoever thinks he has reached the goal, has not; whoever knows he
has not, may have. The choir of Angels at the end of Faust say: "Wer immer strebend
sich bemht, den knnen wir erlsen" (Whoever goes on striving for the goal, him we
can save).
The self is more powerful than the ego; in the earliest and early childhood it is projected
on to parents and the divinity which means that it operates very much like the super-ego
with compulsive oughts, shoulds, musts. The self then is seen as coming from outside as
long as it remains unconscious unrelated to the ego and unknown as being one's own
inner source of existence. There is a similarity between the relationship of self and ego
and that of God and man in the Old Testament. God calls man by his name, and man
answers the call: the 'Here I am' of the prophets; in their dialogue with the Lord they
often plead for sinful man and the Lord listens and relents. In a similar way the ego has
to stand up to the self whose values are non-adapted to present day external reality. An
ego has to be steady to be able to query the commands and demands of the Self, neither
obeying them blindly nor ignoring them as foolishness.
More trouble arises for an individual from unconscious fusion between self and ego;
sometimes it is the ego which denies validity to the self, that is validity to one's own
totality, sometimes it is the self which devours the ego ignoring its rightful needs.
When external reality is seen as the only valid factor in life and Zeitgeist values are
pursued exclusively for personal gain and prestige, an individual may find that such
ambition, determination, one track mind inevitably pays off. For a while there is a price
to pay for such success: the ego becomes brittle, bored, isolated, the prey of a disastrous
inflation. Sometimes feelings of unease, of loss become so insistent that help is sought.
Sometimes an inner or outer catastrophic event has to shatter the shell of the ego and

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persona before an individual can ask for help and give attention to the material offered
to them by the unconscious, particularly by their of dreams; neglected areas of the
psyche then can be explored, re-connected with and re-integrated into the totality of the
personality.
The opposite also happens, namely, that the ego is absorbed by the self; then the ego is
controlled by an unconscious factor, and the individual will find adaptation to external
reality very difficult: the proper separation of ego from the unconscious has not taken
place. Idealists and fanatics, who are always on the side of the angels and having little
patience with human frailty, are among such people. They make absolute demands of
others as well as of themselves. They also suffer from inflation, but this kind seems to
me to be worse than the other because it is so absolute, so condemnatory and cruel. As a
consequence of such high-minded expectations disenchantment, disillusionment, moral
lapses and all kinds of accidents can happen: it is very difficult for such people to come
down to earth. Jung wrote that "a mobilization of all the virtues is indicated, on the
moral side conscientiousness, attention, patience, and on the intellectual side accurate
observation and objective self-criticism have to be practised!"
The Self is the spiritus rector behind all biological and psychic events, it is the energic
power restoring the balance in any fatal one-sidedness; fatal because whatever side an
individual represses and does not attempt to make conscious will have to be met as an
outer event. The disasters which befall different types of people are seldom recognized
as being due to the endeavours of a persistent self which strives to stimulate an
individual into greater awareness or appreciation of the meaning of life and of
wholeness.
These glimpses into the workings of the Self are the opportunities that life provides.
Jung hoped that his patients would come to understand that one's very disablements,
one's diseases could become vehicles of insight and pointer's to one's goal. He wanted to
get across the way in which the self affects every day life and how it can be experienced
as the principle of and the key to psychic health. One has to work for this knowledge.
However, the Self manifests itself in a more dramatic and spontaneous way in numinous
experience, in vision, by seeing, by hearing, by knowing that all is well and that all will
be seen to be well. Such an experience transcends and includes ego; it happens and it
cannot be made happen. A message may which can be accepted and can be refused. One
is suddenly over-whelmed, rooted to the spot in waking life; it can happen during prayer
or meditation. It may be a tremendous experience of having been close to the Ultimate
and one may be flooded by beauty, stillness or gratitude.
However intense, shattering such an experience is it can be ignored. Unless it has to be
incorporated, integrated (incarnated) into the fabric of one's whole being - including the
place where one is in consciousness, the place where the ego and the shadow are found,
it is of no intrinsic value.
Theologians attacked Jung because of his reluctance to make metaphysical statements
and particularly when he averred that one could not distinguish empirically whether
such experiences were an experience of God or of the self. Christian theologians,
furthermore, were angered because of his attitude to Christ who he did not consider to
represent totality, because only His lightness was taught. Christ is beyond light and dark,
good and evil in His glory, Jesus the Man was very human according to the records we
have of Him. But Jung was very ambivalent in his statements, he could not forget what
he had suffered in childhood and adolescence from the ideal of perfection, and when he

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saw his father collapse under that burden. Jung rejected the goal of perfection and put
wholeness in its place; from an intellectual point of view they are poles apart; as an
emotional experience of wholeness, they are one.
The Self appears in dreams in many different ways, it can be projected on to human
beings, on animals which have archetypal symbolic significance, on abstract figures or
numbers. At some time or other "he" or "she" will meet their own principle "him-self" or
"her-self" in the guise of the wise old man or beggar, or as the queen of the realm or
scruffy old earth-mother, incorporating, transcending the ordinary figure of the same sex
in dreams, the personal shadow.
The best known symbol for the Self is the mandala. Mandala is a Sanskrit word for
circle used in Tibetan Buddhism and Tantric Yoga for the combination of circle and
square representing the Cosmos and the Self. The highest spiritual value is placed in the
centre, within the circumference everything is contained which belongs to the self,
namely the pairs of opposites: in the collective sense as well as in the personal.
Mandalas are constructed and painted with infinite care usually by a group of monks
according to traditional strict rules; they can be seen in monasteries and temples where
they serve as aids for meditation and contemplation. Individual mandalas exist created
by lamas whenever they are unable to find a thought which has to be looked for within
as it is not contained in the sacred doctrine: and this would be a psychic disturbance. A
Rimpoche told Jung this when he was in India.
In the West mandalas never had the general collective significance as in the East; in
Christian religious art they are expressions of individual inner experiences. Jung
observed mandalas occurring and reoccurring in his patients dreams; he also observed
that some of his patients quite spontaneously painted or drew circles when they were
under particular stress or distressed in the analytic situation or for whatever other reason.
Sometimes they painted a whole series of mandalas, one after the other, each differing
slightly from the other, from being empty circles to being filled with meaningful
symbolic objects, from having no centre to acquiring one. The circle, Jung wrote, is an
autonomous psychic fact, a kind of kernel whose inner structure and deepest
significance we do not know, though it can be taken as a mirror image of the conscious
attitude. Jung himself painted many, many mandalas, very elaborate ones; he
experienced in himself their effect on the psyche, calming, ordering, healing: the
influence of the Self. He waited for 14 years before publishing anything about mandalas
in the famous dream series "The Process of Individuation", and in his essay about
mandala symbolism.
I said in the beginning that the Self is a concept, an experience, a discovery. I want to
add one more attribute: the quest for wholeness is hard work for the ego. It is a life long
finding and losing, yearning and being weary: it requires constant attention. Sometimes I
have been asked about the difference between totality and wholeness: one is born of a
totality, wholeness is the fruit of endeavour. This endeavour is the magnum opus contra
naturam, the operations presented to us by the alchemists: their work was the
transformation of base material into the highest value, into the gold which is non
vulgum. The alchemists had a laboratory for work and an oratory for prayer; success of
the process depended on the will, on the grace of God, Deo volente, Deo concedente.
Jung regarded the alchemists as his historical forerunners with whose search he could
identify. In the East lamas searched for thoughts that had got lost within themselves; in
the West alchemists were searching for the treasure hard to attain within themselves;

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today modern men and women within themselves for their souls and the Self, the still
point.
This is the Self which Jung never regarded to be nothing but a concept replacing the
living God, but as the vessel into which God's grace might pour. I would like to end with
a quotation from a letter Jung wrote to Father Victor White: "A complete life does not
consist in theoretical completeness, but in the fact that one accepts without reservation
the particular fatal tissue in which one finds oneself embedded, and that one tries to
make sense of it or to create a cosmos from the chaotic mess into which one is born.
April 1985
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