2-7-98: JUNG, ELIADE, CAMPBELL and the Critique of KEN WILBER

These three men, Carl Jung, Mircia Eliade and Joseph Campbell, are largely responsible for the restoration of the ancient discipline I call "Myth and Archetype". Each deserves a lofty place in the "Lives of Great People" series for this contribution. As I have already mentioned in the article on Paul Gauguin, it is the Moon which governs this applied discipline. The Moon represents that aspect of the personality which is best described as the fine feeling level which includes the subconscious as well as the conscious mind.

In what he describes as "his first mature work", namely, "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution", Ken Wilber seeks to distance himself from his former allegiances to Jung and others of the mythological tradition. Why? The reasons are rather complicated, and to fully understand them, one would probably need to read some of his work, or someone else's summary of it. Robert Walsh's article in the recently published book "Ken Wilber In Dialogue" might be a good start.

Wilber concludes that myth and archetype, as expressed in Jung, Campbell and others, most often leads to highly damaging forms of regression, or a return to the prepersonal in the name of achieving the superpersonal. Wilber does not reject the study of myth and archetype; he merely suggests that it is a lower holon encompassed in a now-higher awareness (the centaur). He distinguishes the transpersonal archetypes delineated by men like Shankara and Eckhart and to be discovered in the future by most people, from the past archetypes, which reside in the collective unconscious of humanity and which have little to do with the true transpersonal archetypes. Wilber is particularly hard on Joseph Campbell for his "elevation" of myth and archetype to a status it does not deserve, and which causes human beings to revert to earlier stages of human evolution in the name of spiritual growth.

Because of Wilber's growing influence in transpersonal circles, I am certain that many people have begun to turn away from myth and archetype believing that, for all the reasons stated by Wilber, it can no longer serve as an effective, primary spiritual tool in human evolution. It may still have great value, but is not the essential one which must be rooted in what Wilber calls "vision-logic", the primary developmental stage human beings are at today.

A study of the principles of The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living (TM) may lead one to the following conclusion: Wilber's lack of understanding of, and sympathy for, the archetypal symbolism expressed in astrology through The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living leads to some profound misunderstandings on his part of the nature of myth and archetype. Let me be quite precise. There are three planetary orderings which represent the full range of body, mind and spirit, or the gross, subtle and causal:

1. The Physical = Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth-Moon, Venus, Mercury and Sun;

2. The Mental = Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn;

3. The Spiritual = Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Moon and Sun.

When Wilber speaks of developmental stages, with myth and archetype representing the earliest stages of infancy, he is at the mental level of the planetary orderings where, indeed, the Moon (myth and archetype) governs infancy. When he talks of transpersonal stages, he is at the spiritual level of the planetary orderings where, as states of consciousness, the Moon represents the Subtle Realm of Existence, or Consciousness -- to use Wilber's terminology. However, this transpersonal realm also includes the archetyping of individual variations in approach to Spirit. It is here that the "Eight Great Paths to God" (including the Nodes of the Moon) are defined as an integral part of the transpersonal realm. Saturn through Sun represent states of consciousness, but they also represent variations in how we traverse these states. This only makes sense in that the highest state of reality must fully incorporate both the universal and the individual in one, complete, archetypal patterning.

Wilber's "orienting generalizations" are totally lacking this individualistic orientation and lead to profound distortions in knowledge. The reason Wilber finds no connection between the collective unconscious archetypes of Jung, Campbell and Eliade and those of his own favorite transpersonalists is because he does not seem to have grasped some of Rudolph Steiner's cognitions about the nature of primitive humanity and their unique closeness to the Gods, even if that closeness was a "dreamy" kind of awareness rather than the clear awareness of those with our present highly developed egoic consciousness. The early myths of humanity come from having walked with the Gods in very intimate ways. When Wilber suggests that the Gods and Goddesses of antiquity "are not transpersonal modes of awareness, or genuinely mystical luminosities, but simply a collection of typical and everyday self-images (and personae) available to men and women", he conveys more than he realizes about certain defects in his own inner development. With this stand he is putting himself in a very precarious position.

Those on the path of the heart (Bhakti Yoga) -- in this was true of Joseph Campbell -- will always be drawn to myth and archetype as their PRIMARY MEANS of spiritual development, and for them, it will be the highest and most efficacious means. They will not be regressing to a more primitive, dreamy and infantile state when doing so either. They will be using a higher reason which includes the subconscious mind.

Of course on one point Wilber is correct: to the extent that Campbell sought to elevate the path of myth and archetype as something superior to any or all of the other seven archetypal paths, to that extent he was deluded and not fully honoring The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living.