describes this process. In his introduction, Chogyam Trungpa makes clear that whilst
the text describes experience ‘between lives’, it is also a metaphor for the unfolding
of Self through the ego. The parallels to the process described above are strong:
there is a primitive ‘self’ aware of an external world. Now as soon as this
happens, the self reacts to its surroundings: this is...feeling. It is not yet fully
developed emotion—just an instinctive liking, dislike or indifference, but
immediately it grows more complicated as the centralised entity asserts itself
by reacting not only passively but actively. This is...perception, in its fullest
sense, when the self is aware of stimulus and automatically responds to it. The...
concept, covering the intellectual and emotional activity of interpretation...
follows perception. It is what puts things together, and builds up the patterns
of personality and karma. Finally there is consciousness which combines all the
sense perceptions and the mind. The self has not become a complete universe
of its own; instead of directly perceiving the world as it really is, it projects its
own images all around it.Whether Self forms ego, or ego forms Self, is irrelevant. Holding firm to the first is
‘classical Jungian theory’, and the second, ‘developmental theory’. Both can become
attempts to freeze a fluent process, which Michael Fordham called deintegration and
re-integration—opening and closing (1976:27–8). Deintegration is the opening of
Self to experiences, and re-integration the closure of ego around the experience which
can then be taken into Self— where it forms a stable internal object. We cannot say
where Self begins or ends. Self is, by its nature, a paradox. It holds and contains
opposites, so statements about it are often both assertions and denials, as in these few
lines taken from The Thunder: Perfect Mind (Robinson 1988:295–404):
For I am knowledge and ignorance
I am shame and boldness
I am shameless, I am also ashamed.The nature of Self is to raise religious and mystical questions. As it is similar to a God
Image, there can be unfortunate confusions between analytical psychology and
religion (Noll 1996). One way to understand the Jungian notion of individuation is
to use the Buddhist notion of karma, and the way to understand Self is the Buddhist
notion: No-Self. A Buddhist could have written, ‘The Self is not only the centre but
also the circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the
centre of this totality just as the ego is the centre of the conscious mind.’ But this was
Jung, in 1953. Ego can never hope to accommodate Self in all its aspects. No more
than a naked child with a new face can hope to accommodate the Ocean.
KARMA AND INDIVIDUATION 215