Ways To The Self

In this volume, Murray Stein and Diane Stanley explore, compare and contrast key features of the Buddhist view of Self liberation and the Jungian process of individuation. In Chapter One, they share experiences that opened a path to Self-knowledge in their own lives, including psychedelics, meditation, synchronicity, dreams and active imagination. The value of integrating transcendent experiences is explored in Chapter Two. In Chapter Three, they look at art work as soul-work, based on a series of twenty-four pictures from a Jungian analysis. What do such images, absent the specific dream content from which they arise, reveal about the direction of individuation? Chapter Four focuses on the tensions and difficulties of living in two worlds - the temporal and the timeless - as well as on the unconscious drive to bring them into synergy. Finally, the discussion concludes by circling back to the original question and asks: what are the limits and prospects of liberation of the Self?