The Knowledge That Leads to Wholeness: Gnostic Myths Behind Jung's Theory of Individuation

By Robert Lloyd

The Knowledge that Leads to Wholeness is the first book to specifically illustrate how the major Gnostic myths underlie Jungs theory of individuation. It is a compelling and in-depth examination of a life-changing journey that begins with the author discovering the forgotten secrets of the Gnostics. These secrets are gradually unveiled as the author and his loyal dog, Gold, are initiated, each in their own way, to put the ancient knowledge into practice.

Dr. Lloyd explores the esoteric side of Carl Jung and reveals the connections between Jungs pivotal theory of individuation, i.e. the journey to wholeness, and the powerful, visionary myths told by the pioneers of the psyche, the Gnostics. He details what happens to a person who is on the road to wholeness, how the person will change, and how a new divine-human identity will be born into the world as a result of undertaking this transformational odyssey.

-KIRKUS DISCOVERIES Review -

Did Carl Jungs principles of psychology have Gnostic origins? A Marine Corps Ph.D. explores the complex mystical possibilities.

Lloyd splits his expansive hypothesis of the souls journey into three vital steps (preparation, undertaking and re-birth) in discovering Jungs path to wholeness. He credits Jung with saving his life by way of unlocking his imagination (the souls voice) and spiritual mindset. The author familiarizes readers with the Gnostic religious movement, practitioners of an intensely spiritual inner exploration, who believed that humans are not bound to experiences solely of the body and mind. His literary gift to Jung is these comparative ruminations, all exuding a great amount of imagination and provocative thought. Running parallel to the authors spiritually progressive interests is his adventuresome interaction with and imaginal dog named Gold, who discovers two seeds of knowledge. The first rediscovers the spark of divine life, whereby humans are one and the same with God, and the second amplifies Jungs individuation theory that the human ego must relate to the unconscious mind to achieve psychological health. Unerringly throughout his narrative, Lloyd grafts Gnostic myths with Jungian wisdom. He focuses on the psychic creator and king of the material world Demiurge in association with second-century Gnostic visionary Valentinus, whose tragic myth of Sophia tells of a restless female deity who travels outside of herself searching for wholeness rather than looking inward, and her ultimate repentance. Comparatively, Jung also writes of humans who restrict themselves to their five senses rather than tapping into the core strength of their imaginative visions where uncanny experiences might spring forth. As Lloyd (and Gold) survey principles of higher consciousness, the self, the transformative life-cycle process, and the concluding Syrian lyrical myth Song of the Pearl as they are juxtaposed against Jungs theories, the author also cites Gnostic challenges to contemporary religious beliefs as in the re-imagined genesis of Jesus of Nazareth. Most interestingly, Lloyd inserts Jung into his narrative to quiz his arbiters as to whether they have the desire to discover the mystery of their existence.

Unfiltered hokum for some, but those who are open to it will find much-needed nourishment and direction for their searching souls.

--Nielsen Business Media, 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 646-654-7277 fax [phone] [e-mail]

Visit www.robertcharleslloyd.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 26, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469102085

Robert Lloyd

Robert Lloyd, Ph.D., holds three degrees that qualify him to write this book: a bachelor of arts in philosophy and religion, a master of arts in marriage and family therapy, and a doctorate in depth psychology. While researching his dissertation at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpenteria, California, Dr. Lloyd gave lectures to students and faculty about the topic of his research: the relationship between Jung’s theory of individuation and the ancient Gnostic myths. The author is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has been in clinical practice in the Los Angeles and San Diego area for fifteen years.

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Copyright © 2007 by Robert Lloyd.

Cover illustration is Birth Painting by Gilbert Williams.

Copyright 1975 Gilbert Williams, All Rights Reserved.

www.gilbertwilliams.com

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Contents

THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE      Preparing for the Soul’s Journey

CHAPTER 1      God’s Loyal Dog

CHAPTER 2      The Seed of What We Have Forgotten

CHAPTER 3      The Gnostic Worldview and the Amazing Odyssey of Sophia

CHAPTER 4      Gold’s Descent

CHAPTER 5      Carl Jung and the Inner Spiritual Community

CHAPTER 6      The Seed of Initiation into the Soul’s Mysteries

CHAPTER 7      The Higher Imagination

CHAPTER 8      The Spirit, the Soul, and the Self

PART TWO      Undertaking the Soul’s Journey

CHAPTER 9      The Anguishing Fall of Sophia

CHAPTER 11      The Student’s Attitude

CHAPTER 13      Dreams of the Developing Self

CHAPTER 14      The Friend of Light

PART THREE      The Birth of the Divine Human

CHAPTER 15      The Mysteries of the Self in the Song of the Pearl

CHAPTER 16      Gold’s Realization

CHAPTER 17      The Work of the Guiding Self

CHAPTER 18      Drops of Light

CHAPTER 19      Imaginal Cultures

CHAPTER 20      Becoming a Whole Human Being

EPILOGUE

ENDNOTES

THE AUTHOR

Robert Lloyd, PhD, holds three degrees that qualify him to write this book: a bachelor of arts in philosophy and religion, a master of arts in marriage and family therapy, and a doctorate in depth psychology. While researching his dissertation at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpenteria, California, Dr. Lloyd gave lectures to students and faculty about the topic of his research: the relationship between Jung’s theory of individuation and the ancient Gnostic myths. The author is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has been in clinical practice in the Los Angeles and San Diego area for fifteen years.

Although he writes and speaks about the spirit in the field of psychology, Dr. Lloyd’s professional work is grounded in the sufferings of real men and women. He has been known in the San Diego area for his work in treating men who have experienced problems with family violence. He founded a court-approved men’s program called HOMEPEACE and wrote the curriculum to help men who have been arrested for spouse abuse to find a new path out of their personal and legal darkness into the light of integrity and nonviolence.

Since 1994, Dr. Lloyd has worked with the United States Marine Corps to provide counseling services for men and women who have been exposed to the traumas of war or family violence or who have just lost their way and have sunken into depression. He is known for his classes on suicide prevention, stress and anger management, and communication skills. In addition, he has counseled couples that find themselves in a relationship crisis and are looking for a way to heal the brokenness.

Dr. Lloyd has undertaken his own psychological and spiritual journey over the past twenty-five years, including the descent into his own psychological pain in over twelve years of Jungian analysis and his initiation and participation in several hermetic and Gnostic communities. These communities are made up of men and women who take the journey of the soul and the practice of the spirit seriously (but not somberly). They are communities of spiritual athletes who work every day to cooperate with the intentions of the spirit in reaching its full potential.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgment of the Twin Self Angel

You, who chose this life as a means of your evolution and as a means of helping to transform the primordial deity by placing the drop of light within this mortal system, I honor you. You, who remember the reason for this incarnation and the many past incarnations, I defer to you.

You have led me throughout this lifetime, sometimes having to overcome a stubborn, egocentric will to get me in the right place at the right time. I have not always listened or accepted your guidance. I have often behaved as if this body and this mind are mine alone, as if I could do whatever I wanted with them. Now I realize this life, body, and mind are not for me alone. I realize I am somehow you in an unconscious phase. I am slowly waking up to the fact that I am some kind of a community of beings, perhaps a culture, and that you are the god of that culture. And I realize that the success of this incarnation depends upon this culture doing the will of this god.

Therefore, I accept you as the true self that I am, the true god of the community that I am. I surrender all illusory private wants, wishes, and willfulness to your deeper purposes. I thank you for bringing me teachers, and I agree to work diligently and playfully so that your will is fully accomplished in me. I agree to open myself to mystical and visionary experience; this will provide a balance for years of intellectual knowledge that can take me no further. I agree to enter the mysteries and realize the image of wholeness in this life, for you are who I truly am and will forever be.

Acknowledgment of My Initiators

The Church of the Pearl: You are my outer spiritual community. We walk the path of gnosis together on the way to becoming Eloheim, on the way to wholeness. Thank you for initiating me into the Gnostic priesthood, thereby making me a link in an eternal chain of light.

Veronica Goodchild, PhD, my doctoral advisor: Like a priestess of the ancient mysteries, you led me to incubate in the cave of psyche until the visitors came and I could hear their message. Thank you for helping me to first close and then open my eyes just in time for the birth of this word child. For your commitment to the Great Work, I am grateful.

Stephan Hoeller, PhD, my doctoral reader: Your life has been a work of art that draws those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear into the depths of gnosis. Thank you for teaching me through so many mediums and making me laugh as I learned. You make the Gnostic adventure a truly interesting and enjoyable experience.

FOREWORD

In December 1945, an Arab countryman accidentally discovered a large collection of Gnostic codices in Upper Egypt. The find was named the Nag Hammadi Library and became responsible for an unprecedented amount of interest in the early Christian tradition usually known as Gnosticism. Sixty years later, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the literature expounding Gnostic themes has grown to monumental size; it ranges from somber tomes of academic scholarship to popular works by scholars (two best sellers by Elaine Pagels come to mind: The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief) and to mass-marketed fiction, like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It would seem that Gnostics and Gnosticism have returned to our postmodern culture and that this time, they are here to stay.

The return of Gnosticism to the culture was both foreshadowed and facilitated by a peculiar sensitivity toward Gnostic insights that has been growing in many circles of the culture throughout the twentieth century. It is generally recognized today that one of the most influential figures fostering such a sensitivity was the Swiss psychologist Carl GustavJung. As the noted scholar of Gnosticism Giovanni Filoramo wrote,

Jung’s reflections had long been immersed in the thought of ancient Gnostics… Inasmuch as it involves research into the ontological self, a cognitive technique that anticipates the modern process of individuation, ancient gnosis, albeit in its form of universal religion, in a certain sense prefigured, and atthe same time helped to clarify, the nature of Jungian spiritual therapy.¹

Robert Lloyd explores with great insight the trajectories extending between Gnostic myths and Jung’s theory of individuation. It was Jung who first recognized the Gnostics as archetypal visionaries whose mythic writings described, at least in part, the internal drama of psycho-spiritual development which he named individuation. There is thus assuredly adequate warrant for the kind of work Robert Lloyd has undertaken in the present treatise. The two important Gnostic myths, i.e., the Story of Sophia and the Song of the Pearl illuminate the central Gnostic concern as manifest in the journey of the spiritual soul and the coming forth of the divine from within the human psyche with great power and impressive imagery. Dr. Lloyd’s approach to these themes would certainly delight any true Gnostic, including C. G. Jung.

Part of Jung’s pioneering insight concerned the objective factors involved in the subjective states of Gnostic consciousness. The great swiss doctor was also wont to point out that the Gnostic writers experienced exalted states fueled by intense emotions. Robert Lloyd wisely points out that to obtain gnosis, transcendent states of consciousness were induced by Gnostic practitioners and that this was probably facilitated by meditation, breathing practices, the use of psychoactive plants, and the practice of an archaic form of active imagination called incubation.

All in all, the author has presented his readers with a fine bouquet of Gnostic flowers of both ancient and modern provenance. The reception and appreciation of this gift are heartily recommended!

Stephan Hoeller

INTRODUCTION

The United States Marine sitting across from me in the counseling office was a sunni Muslim who had just returned from fighting in operation Iraqi Freedom. But this warrior was anything but free. He was suffering the devastating aftereffects of combat trauma, and now he wondered what it was all for. The Marine said to me, I just don’t know who I am anymore. I’m a Marine and I’m a Muslim. How can I be both and still fight in this war?

This Marine’s dilemma typifies the problem of a growing number of Americans who are facing a crisis of values and conscience, causing them to question what they truly believe in and what they are actually willing to give their lives for. over the last half century since world war II, Americans have been plunged into social, political, and religious crises, one after another, rupturing their self-confidence, as happened to this young sunni Muslim, and darkening the expansive optimism that once characterized what it meant to be an American. Since the sixties, Americans have been confronted with the lies, crimes, and moral lapses of their political leaders, with wars they did not want, and with promises that were never kept. More recently, Americans have awakened to shocking revelations that their religious leaders were not what they seemed and, in fact, were concealing horrible sexual abuses that were allowed to continue long after the crimes were known. To a sizable number today, political figures seem like hollow images of would-be leaders out to manipulate voting blocks for partisan gain. Many Americans seek diversion in reality entertainment, but few would disagree that even professional sports have lost their image of providing a human endeavor that is beyond greed and personal gain.

After the trauma of World War II subsided, the American fantasy of unrestricted growth and progress returned, fueled by the scientific breakthroughs that ushered in the atomic age. People imagined that science could restore a broken world by providing technologies that made life easier and more comfortable. The discoveries of science radically changed the economies and industries of the Western world; but many argued that the engine of the Western economies, with their dependency upon foreign oil, was being fueled at the expense of the environment and various non-Western cultures, particularly in less developed third world countries. The decision makers turned a blind eye and continued the mad rush to grow capitalistic economies and increase the reach of Western technologies and businesses around the globe. Environmental concerns like the depletion of the ozone layer, pollution of the seas by oil spills, and of the land by the dumping of toxic waste, were eventually echoed by other warning signs coming from Muslim countries, some of which are the source of the very oil that makes the technology possible. Various Muslim groups perceived American expansion in business and technology in their countries to be an unwanted imposition of secular values on religious cultures. Since the Iran hostage crisis of the late 1970s, the specter of terrorism has forced itself on the American psyche, pressing us to consider the cost of our global and technological expansion.

It is evident that there has been a shadow side to our cultural fantasies; but because, for the most part, we have not faced our collective shadow, we continue to pursue a self-destructive and world-destructive path. As a people, we are devoid of a connectedness and relatedness to our planet and to people of different cultures. Some orthodox Christians try to fill the void by preaching about a Jesus that saves people from going to hell for their sins, but many other people find this image of Jesus to be a shallow misunderstanding of the true meaning of the good news. For a growing number, the issue is that in spite of the millions who attend some form of religious worship, too many of us as individuals lack the knowledge of our personal shadow. As a society, we lack the knowledge of our cultural shadow. The consequence is that we fail to recognize the impact of our actions at home and around the world. Because so many of us are cut off from our spiritual roots, our culture seems to be withering.

There is an essential and vital knowledge available that can give our lives meaning; but it is precisely because we lack this knowledge that we feel alienated from the source of our existence, that our social institutions lose their compass, and that, as a people, we are alienated from each other and the world. Where does this knowledge come from? If not from our orthodox religions, our revered political institutions, or our scientific experiments, then from where can it come? The answer may surprise you. The source of this knowledge is a social and spiritual tradition that is at the root of our Western cultures and in fact is the very root of Western philosophy itself. This sacred tradition has for millennia been suppressed, persecuted, and marginalized by dominant Western religions, governments, and (later in history) academic science. And yet, in various forms, it has survived. Today, we have full access to this tradition so that we can use this formerly rejected part of our cultural heritage to fill the emptiness within, to answer the spiritual longings of our hearts, and to save our culture from its tragic course.

The spiritual tradition I am referring to is organized around the call to self-knowledge, and it is about people who have answered that sacred call, a call that sets them on a long journey that completely transforms them and shows them the reality behind what the ordinary mind can perceive. The call to "know thyself’ has echoed through the early history of the Western cultures and has taken various, albeit hidden, forms over the centuries.

The words "know thyself’ were inscribed at the oracular center dedicated to Apollo in Delphi in ancient Greece.¹ Obviously, the ancient Greeks placed a high value on self-knowledge. What did they know about the value of self-knowledge that we today have forgotten? The answer seems to be found in the connection the ancient Greeks made between knowing the divine mysteries and knowing one’s self. This connection will become increasingly important as we explore the value of self-knowledge in helping us reach our goal of human wholeness.

The search for self-knowledge is connected to the search for our human origins. Why does the human heart have this long history of wondering about our origins and destiny, and of yearning for something more than simple physical survival and comfort? From the dawn of civilization to the present, human beings have searched for connections to the mysteries of life and death and for a relationship to powers that transcend conscious awareness. Ancient societies of peoples from areas that today we call Iraq, Iran, syria, Egypt, Israel, and Greece formed local groups to find ways to know these things. The Greeks called this special kind of knowledge gnosis. Gnosis is an intuitive knowledge of our origins, nature, and destiny. It is a gift that is received from direct personal experience with archetypal forces within the human psyche that are sometimes encountered during unusual states of consciousness. Many of the people who have sought gnosis have said they experienced a realm of the psyche that is vastly different from the material world. They have said that it transcends the kind of world we ordinarily live in. Some of these mystic travelers have said their experience is like waking up from the dream of everyday consciousness and realizing that they have been asleep throughout their lives.

To obtain gnosis, these communities of seekers experimented with transcendent states of consciousness through meditation, breathing practices, the use of psychoactive plants, and the practice of incubation. Peter Kingsley, a contemporary mystic and scholar of ancient philosophy, recalls that in the sixth century BCE in Caria (the western coast of Turkey), the ancient healing priests of Apollo and Persephone would guide people who were seeking to connect with the divine or seeking to be healed of a physical or emotional illness. The priestly guides would have the seeker lie down in utter stillness like animals in a lair in order to incubate in a receptive state of consciousness.²

Many of these seekers reported they had personal encounters with beings from beyond this material world. The priestly guides encouraged the seekers to reflect on their experiences and give them some kind of expression. From these reflections sprang stories and wisdom sayings. Local groups developed their own traditions and passed their learned experience on to new seekers. Eventually, these traditions found their way to the various cultures of the Middle East and the lands of Asia Minor.

To put it poetically, it is as if the soul has been trying to find its way back home by stimulating the higher uses of the imagination. The myths that came from the mystic seekers suggest that if one seriously meditates on the mysteries of life and death, gnosis will come, and it will seem as if awakening from a dream. Like our mystic ancestors who incubated in the deep realms of the psyche,³ those who take the journey themselves may experience phenomena beyond the categories of the rational mind. They may begin to experience their lives as if they were a living myth being played out on the stage of the material world. They may even find themselves improvising new ways of expressing the wonders of the transcendent realms and the strangeness of the dark underworld. There are many such expressions all around us today that have survived the attempts to suppress them, including the initiation system into the Gnostic priesthood, the esoteric art of ceremonial magic, the practice of alchemy, the images of the tarot, the philosophical clarity of the Kabbalah, and the more recent gnosis-based psychology of Carl Jung. All these esoteric systems represent one basic phenomenon: the soul seeking to unite with its origins and gain self-knowledge.

Elaine Pagels, a leading scholar in the field of Gnostic studies, describes gnosis in a way that suggests a person can gain a firsthand experiential knowledge of God by acquiring psychological and spiritual insight into his or her own nature and self.⁴ She presents the words of a second-century Gnostic teacher called Monoimus who exhorts his listeners to accept the invitation to find the seed of self-knowledge.

Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body. Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate… . If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself.⁵

Gnosis then is the personal experience you will have when you ponder the questions posed by your soul, and you find the hidden divine spirit within you. In this book, the words soul and spirit are meant to be taken as psychic images that are real but beyond our logical categories of thinking. By focusing on these real psychic images, the Gnostics suggest, you will find that you are more than just a body and a mind with earthly concerns. You will begin to remember that you are a composite, a being who combines the elements of matter and biochemistry with the mysterious soul that appears to have existed before birth, that has chosen you through which to incarnate, and that will continue to exist after your body dies. Yes, the soul will continue to exist, the Gnostics say. After the death of the body, the soul will either have fulfilled its purpose in human life or not. What is that purpose? The Gnostics say it has to do with forming a union with the spark of divine mind within us. If the soul has accomplished that task, it is said to return—in a transformed condition—to our original birthplace of Light. If the soul fails, it is said by some, including Plato,⁶ it chooses another material body and personality and begins school in the physical world all over again. All these metaphysical assertions describe part of the psychic image called the soul" that is a very real part of the human psyche. As such, these images and the ideas that go with them are the proper focus of depth psychology.

Our link with this ancient tradition is Carl Jung, the psychiatrist from Zurich, who rediscovered the knowledge that can lead to wholeness and has written about it in his collected works. Jung was given this knowledge to share with the modern world. The knowledge was a gift that came from his encounters with a realm beyond the five senses, an inner world that Jung researched extensively and that led him to meet archetypal⁷ powers, some might say beings that gave him this culture-healing knowledge.

Before Jung, the ancient Gnostics learned the techniques of traveling on this inner road. They pioneered the technologies fortaking the inner journey, and they too discovered the knowledge that leads to wholeness. Jung and the ancient Gnostics are both part of the same spiritual tradition organized around the call to self-knowledge.

This book focuses on two gifts given to Jung and the Gnostics by the inner archetypal powers of the human psyche. These two gifts are like magical seeds. As Jung and his Gnostic predecessors investigated the inner world, it was as if they planted seeds in their minds, nurtured them along, and allowed a tree of wholeness and life to grow within them. As will be discussed, it is these two life-giving seed gifts that are essential for the healing of psychological and social ills. We first need to know about the existence of these seed gifts, and then we need to know how to plant them in our own consciousness. By planting the seed gifts within, we will find a new way of thinking and a new way of acting that will constitute a daily psychological and spiritual practice that can overcome our sense of isolation from the source and depth of life. The planting of these seed gifts and performing the daily practice they provide is vitally necessary for us to achieve a wholeness of personality that allows for the realization of our psychological and spiritual potential.

What does it mean to realize your psychological and spiritual potential? First, think of your personality with all its strengths and weaknesses. Imagine transforming all the contradictory and weak aspects of your personality—your shadow—into qualities that actually become strengths and that help you achieve a balance and a poise that allow you to excel in all your undertakings.

Now think of the strange and bizarre images that appear in your dreams, the sudden urges, impulses, and fantasies, the seemingly amazing coincidences that sometimes happen. Imagine finding a way to relate to these stirring experiences and learning to speak the language of symbols so that you have a better grasp on what the unconscious is saying to you. These imagined changes could become reality. They could lead to the realization of your psychological potential.

Now think