In this brief annotated bibliography I comment on a limited selection of books related to individuation while introducing the meaning of the individuation process. I include books that lie outside the parameters defined by Jungian psychology per se.
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Jung once wrote, “everywhere one hears the cry for a Weltanshauung everyone asks the meaning of life and the world.” His answer to the quest for the meaning is the need for greater consciousness and the organization of life around the Self. By the Self, Jung meant both a transcendental centre of being with both a personal and transpersonal dimension and wholeness that potentially fulfils itself over space and time.
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In this paper, I reflect on the fundamental nature of a comprehensive psychotherapy for Auroville. I begin with the Mother’s observations on what it means to be an Aurovilian. I then discuss the basic guidelines for doing psychotherapy in Auroville as well as her comments about a retreat center for those in need. I expand the notion of a retreat center to include individuals who proactively feel the need for a retreat from time to time for purposes of self-education and self-reflection. I then examine Sri Aurobindo’s observations on the nature of a complete psychology from his point of view, and indicate how Jung’s understanding of psychology is compatible. I also show how both the neurotic and psychotic psyches are perversions of the healthy psyche and not fundamentally different. A large part of the paper is dedicated to the psycho-cultural differences between India and the West, an understanding that is essential for doing psychotherapy in Auroville.
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In this essay and my essay entitled Evil Persona, Shadow and the Transformation of Community, I engage in the realm of praxis, which is so essential to understanding Jung’s contribution to psychology and spirituality. This essay primarily concerns an experiential phenomenon that I call the white-shadow persona. The white-shadow persona is a product of the persona that is identified with high ideals driven by a power-complex. The persona is the mask that feigns individuality, but which is a collective phenomena with which one should not identify. The power-complex is a split-off power-drive, which, when assimilated to consciousness, becomes a formative factor that can be used creatively, and the spirit of life.
In this essay I examine what Sri Aurobindo referred to as the humankind’s double nature consisting of its animal nature of instincts impulses desires and automatisms and its higher, self-reflective, mental, aesthetic, ethical and spiritual nature. I particularly study humankind in terms of modern western individuals, with their damned-up repressed instincts. I then study the Evil Persona as defined by Sri Aurobindo, suggesting that it be understood in light of the persona as presented by C. G. Jung. Sri Aurobindo defined it as a being that is attached to the sadhaks who creates wrong conditions. The persona is the ideal image and mask that one wears to present oneself to the world, either professionally or otherwise. Although the persona serves the purpose of greasing the wheels of life, one is enjoined not to identify with its false wrappings. The Evil Persona, in fact, seems to be a product of both the workings of the persona, and also the shadow. The brighter and more virtuous the persona, then the darker is the shadow, the repressed other side of the coin. If the falseness of the Evil Persona can be relegated to the field of the Asura of Falsehood, then the darkness of the shadow is the realm of the Asura of Ignorance.
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