I was recently in the throes of writing my previous piece, on Carlos Castaneda. It should have been easy, but turned out to be a real struggle. I reached the section on how our reality is created by the stories that we tell ourselves, when my mind found itself turning in the direction of one James Hillman. Maverick student of Jung, father of modern archetypal psychology, Hillman was the person who first impressed upon me how our life is best read as an ongoing narrative, a fiction. While I had barely cast a glance in the direction of his works over the past three years, in the period previous he had been an enormous guiding presence. I decided there and then to check out what he had been up to recently. The answer, I quickly discovered, was dying. On October 27th of this year, to be precise.
I found myself unexpectedly disturbed by news of James's departure from this material world; unexpected at least given the lack of attention I had paid him in recent times. Yet, from a wider perspective, Hillman can be counted among the dozen or so greatest philosophical, psychological, and spiritual influences on my life to date.
My introduction to Hillman came in a roundabout (yet plausibly inevitable) fashion. Around 1998, in an attempt to find a way out of the cul-de-sac I had led myself up with my practice of Buddhism, I decided to experiment with something else. Shamanic journeying. Once I embarked upon this course of action, quite remarkable things began to happen. During my journeys through the 'lowerworld', as shamanic traditions call it, I found myself participating in all sorts of strange stories, passing through dream landscapes, and encountering all manner of beings human, animal, and 'mythical'. I appeared to be entering an entirely different dimension of existence; only a hair's breadth away and with its own particular coherent reality, yet the door into its magical world seemed normally tightly closed. And participation in this dimension was leading me smoothly out of exclusive identification with the narrow confines of my ego, something which my Buddhist practice, despite its avowed aims, was failing miserably to achieve.
Needless to say, Buddhism as I knew it had nothing to say about the experiences I was having, despite their relevance to the professed goals of Buddhadharma of expanding consciousness beyond the limits of ego concern and identification. In Carl Jung I eventually found somebody who could shed light on all of this. Notions such as 'the collective unconscious' and 'autonomous contents of the psyche' began to provide a conceptual framework for my world-shifting experiences. Most importantly, Jung was clearly someone who had 'been there': a read of 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections', his sort-of autobiography, makes this abundantly clear. And Jung readily accepted the reality and value of such non-ordinary states of consciousness.
From Jung and his archetypes, it was a seamless transition to Hillman's archetypal psychology. Hillman's contention that there is an ever-present archetypal dimension 'behind' or 'beneath' our everyday realities resonated deeply with me. His emphasis on 'soul-making' was a welcome counter to the disembodied spirituality that I had occasion to fall into during my Buddhist heyday. And in his later years Hillman explored with passion anima mundi, soul of the world. By so doing, he was taking psychology right away from its obsession with self and ego, instead aligning it with ancient western teachings about existence. He was saying that soul is to be found as much in the animated, ensouled world around us as literally inside our own limited selves. The title of his 'psychological foreword' to 'Ecopsychology' says it all: 'A Psyche the Size of the Earth'.
In the spirit of my reflections on Castaneda's final book, I would like to say a belated yet heartfelt 'thank you' to James Hillman for his courageous work detailing many insights into the workings of the human (and the non-human) soul. Especially I would like to express my gratitude for these of his works: 'The Dream and the Underworld' for helping me to see that images, and non-ordinary states in general, should be taken 'as is', rather than translated into dayworld concerns; 'Anima' for re-presenting Jung's inspirational notion but cutting through the macho and endlessly oppositional bullshit; and 'Thought of the Heart and Soul of the World' for its masterly deconstruction of pernicious modern notions of separateness and its presentation of a far more beautiful alternative. James, thank you.
