In-depth Reflections On What The Future Holds

By David T. Johnston

This small book contains four Reviews that I made in the year 2020. The first two include Book Reviews, one on Peter Kingsley and Catafalque, the other on Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet and The Chronicles of the Inner Chamber that were requested/suggested to me in close-proximity time wise, indicating the non-dual law of synchronicity was in pla

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Jun 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781648959622

David T. Johnston

David Johnston graduated with a PhD in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 1996. He has been an ardent student of Carl Jung for many years and has been in private practice in Victoria since 1990. He is also a devoted disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. He is the author of four books on Jung: Jung's Global Vision: Western Psyche Eastern Mind, Prophets in Our Midst, and Individuation and the Evolution of Consciousness: At the Turning Point and Jung's Challenge, and I AM THE WAY. He is also an artist and has to his credit many paintings and art pieces, which are done as a form of active meditation.

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Contents

Preface

Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity by Peter Kingsley A Review and Synopsis by Dr. David Johnston

Comments on The Cry of Merlin: Carl Jung and the Insanity of Reason: Gregory Shaw on Peter Kingsley in Marginalia by David Johnston, PhD

Review of The Chronicles of the Inner Chamber: Revealing the Profound Keys of Knowledge Contained in the Mother’s Vision of Her Temple, the Matrimandir by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea), by David Johnston, PhD

Summary and Review of The Chronicles of the Inner Chamber: Revealing the Profound Keys of Knowledge Contained in the Mother’s Vision of

Her Temple, the Matrimandir by Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea), by David Johnston, PhD

The unfolding Image showed the things to come.

A giant dance of Shiva tore the past;

There was a thunder as of worlds that fall;

Earth was o’errun with fire and the roar of Death

Clamouring to slay a world his hunger had made;

There was a clangour of Destruction’s wings

The Titan’s battle-cry was in my ears;

Alarm and rumour shook the armoured Night.

I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers

Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life

Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;

Forerunners of a Divine multitude,

Out of the paths of the morning star they came

Into the little room of mortal life.

I saw them cross the twilight of an age,

The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,

The great creators with wide brows of calm,

The massive barrier breakers of the world

And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,

The labourers in the quarries of the gods,

The messengers of the incommunicable,

The architects of Immortality…

—Sri Aurobindo

Savitri Book III,

Canto IV The Vision and the Boon,

pp. 343–344

Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices: he enthrals and overpowers, while at the same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional and the transitory into the realm of the ever-enduring. He transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny of mankind, and evokes in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have enabled humanity to find refuge from every peril and to outlive the longest night.

—C. G. Jung (1966)

The Collected Works. Volume 15

On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry

para 129

Preface

This small book contains four reviews that I made in the year 2020. The first two include book reviews, one on Peter Kingsley and Catafalque, the other on Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet and The Chronicles of the Inner Chamber that were requested/suggested to me in close proximity timewise, thus indicating the non-dual law of synchronicity was in play. I completed the review on Kingsley’s book and then proceeded with the review of Norelli-Bachelet’s Chronicles. To do this review, which is exceptionally complex, I felt a need to summarize her Chronicles, which is also included. Then I was encouraged to write a review of Gregory Shaw’s review of Kingsley’s book.

When I was doing the work, I had no motive other than getting the message right, at least, inasmuch as I understood it. I have been a disciple of C. G. Jung, and the Mother and Sri Aurobindo for many years, so I had some familiarity with the subject matter in the book/chronicle/review, for which I wrote the reviews. Two of the reviews were sent to Amazon, and, otherwise, they stayed on my computer, without any plans to do anything else with them. Recently, though, I have had inner promptings to put them together in a pamphlet or small book, and this is the result.

Given the recent challenge to humanity by the Covid pandemic, I believe these reviews could encourage studying the source material and, consequently, show the way to the future. The contemporary world is one-sidedly materialistic, whereas the future beckons for a world organized on spiritual and material values, so that spirit and matter unite. That is the message of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and Carl Jung. That is the message we need to heed, so that the good ship Earth is driven in the direction of healing and well-being, with our human participation.

Catafalque:

Carl Jung and the End of Humanity

by Peter Kingsley

A Review and Synopsis

by Dr. David Johnston

(http://peterkingsley.org/product/catafalque/)

We are at the time of the Catafalque, which is an old Italian word that means the embroidered base supporting an important person’s tomb. The tomb here is the Western civilization itself, which, asserts Kingsley, is dead. Following the North American native tradition, by making this observation, he means that the energy that feeds it is no longer there. He comes to this conclusion, supported by a vision Jung had in 1961, close to the time of his death, where he refers to the last fifty years of humanity, which takes us to 2011. ¹ Without knowing of Jung’s vision at the time, Kingsley, who was living with his wife in North Carolina in that very year, experienced what he refers to as the terror and stillness of the end of an age. ² Subsequently, in the middle of March 2015, he had a dream where the word catafalque, unknown to him consciously, was laid out in front of him. ³ This book is the result, the purpose for which is to provide a catafalque for the Western world.

I would like to begin my review by saying how much I appreciate Peter Kingsley’s book, Catafalque. He writes in depth, yet in an appealing and colloquial style that comes across as a kind of incantatory and judiciously repetitive dialogue directed to the reader. I feel as if I am being wafted on a wind of new discovery about Jung and Western civilization, for which I am very grateful. Kingsley not only expresses his erudite viewpoint on the West’s severance from its origins, but he introduces counter-positions that appeal to any doubts one may have to his line of argument. I have been involved in studying Jung as well as Western history over many years. The author manages to tie together threads that, for the most part, I have long been aware of, but not in the comprehensive and meaningful way that he presents it here.

Catafalque is a profound book that deserves to be studied by anyone interested in Jung and his work and, for that matter, anybody interested in Western civilization and its troubled status today. Most of the book is dedicated to Jung as a visionary prophet and magician, which, to Kingsley’s chagrin, has been suppressed by Jungians, including the most prominent among them, who take the position of presenting Jung as a reasonable individual, a scientist, who left the prophetic intensity of the Red Book and his early work behind him. Kingsley discusses the application of Jung’s number 1 and 2 personalities as his two ways of presenting himself, and his work, that makes sense and refutes any claim or evidence that Jung gave up his prophetic and magical depths for a life of a kind of normalcy.⁴

The author presents his case in a refreshing way that allows one to see Jung and his relevance to the contemporary world with fresh eyes. He also writes appealingly about Henry Corbin’s relevance and about his own mission to complete Jung by incorporating the wisdom of the pre-Socratics, notably Parmenides and Empedocles. In the process, Kingsley criticizes prominent Jungians and one post-Jungian, which may not agree with everyone’s taste. The effect, however, is to emphasize what has gone wrong with the contemporary understanding of Jung, who, like all prophets including the pre-Socratics, Parmenides, and Empedocles, is misinterpreted and mistranslated. When a culture meets its end, which is Kingsley’s thesis, there is a need to return to its origins for fresh insight. Whether or not one can follow Kingsley throughout, I suggest holding any quibbles in suspension. I highly recommend this book as immensely relevant and a must-read.

I presently feel a need to give a synopsis of Catafalque in order to solidify my understanding of Kingsley’s provocative opus, and in order to mitigate the possibility of writing a review full of hot air. At the same time, I fully recognize that a summary cannot do justice to any book, let alone this one, which is full of nuance and statements that will surprise the reader and may shock one’s sensibilities. Kingsley starts his book with a nod to the magic of beginnings that opens the reader to novel ways of seeing. It includes a fresh perspective on Jung, Kingsley’s inner relationship with Jung and Jung’s true ancestors, Joachim de Fiore, the twelfth-century founder of a monastic order and Christian prophet, the alchemists, the Gnostics, the Old Testament prophets back to Abraham, and the pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece. In the Red Book, Jung refers to Philemon as father and has Philemon refer to Jung as son—which is very significant considering that in ancient alchemical and Hermetic tradition, spiritual father and mystical son are ultimately one.⁵ For many readers, these will seem very questionable assertions and their significance unclear. Indeed, any doubt regarding the validity of such statements is an excellent reason to read Kingsley’s profound book and follow how he unpacks their meaning. At one point, Jung famously confesses that his spiritual and psychological guide, beloved Philemon, whom he refers to as the primordial father of the prophets, was the same master that inspired Buddha, Christ, Mani and Mohammed, and Zoroaster, all those who are said to have communed with God.⁶ As Kingsley points out, while the others identified with the master, Jung does not, showing an advance in consciousness that accords with the divine will, possible only today.⁷

He recounts how Jung’s relationship with Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, is particularly relevant in that a dream that Jung had in Tunis in 1920 was about his book that he had written, a Manichaean text on how to master the powers of the unconscious.⁸ This book turned out to be Jung’s own psychology. Jung’s personal lineage follows a line of prophets back to the dawn of Western culture. Jung, in