About The Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences
The Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences is a new kind of educational organization based around the implications of the philosophy and psychology of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. Its purpose is to support the individuation process of the members of its community, via a series of experiences that provide whole-person learning—learning that engages not only students’ minds but their hearts, souls and spirits. Toward that end, the Center has developed courses, workshops and training programs that depart from the schema typical in most Western educational systems in which departments are organized around disciplines. Instead, the Jungian Center recognizes that there are many paths “up the mountain” of the spiritual journey, and as humans we come to the journey as a unity of mind, body, soul and spirit. So the learning experience is arranged around paths (viae) that have been trod for thousands of years by adepts and seekers in both Eastern and Western traditions, paths that resonate with the totality of our being as humans.
The Five Paths
Carl Jung hypothesized a set of orientations (extravert and introvert) and functions (intuition, sensation, thinking and feeling) that create a typology that is now widely used, in various forms, in both therapeutic and business settings. In Jung’s theory, we each have a “superior” function which we employ most readily in dealing with the situations of life. At the same time, we each have an “inferior” function, existing mostly in the unconscious, which can be a pathway to our individuation. At the Jungian Center we drew upon type theory to create the following paths: The Via Physica focuses on the world of matter (physica), especially the physical system within which each human lives: the human body. This way appeals to the sensation type, with his/her keen sensory orientation. The Via Contemplativa, by contrast, resonates with the intuitive, in its focus on the meditative, mystical and psychic realms in service to the spirit. Science, logic and things intellectual are the purview of the Via Investigativa, within which thinking types flourish. This is the arena of most college curricula, with their focus on mental development. Through the Via Creativa students have the opportunity for self-expression in a variety of verbal, visual, auditory and tactile venues which feed the soul. The fifth path, the Via Practica, grounds the other four in the world of daily living, through a combination of experiential short modules that equip students with some of the practical skills for living consciously. Since a central goal of the Jungian Center is to foster individuation, we strongly encourage participants to take courses and workshops that draw on their inferior function, as well as those that build on their strengths.
The Uniqueness of the Jungian Center
The Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences is an unusual learning organization. Those familiar with mainstream academia will find many elements of our program different from the norm, e.g. our appreciation of ancient wisdom and technologies, like astrology and alchemy, and our recovery of the holistic, participatory methodologies of native traditions. We integrate the inclusive philosophical attitude of Carl Jung in all areas of our program, as we seek not merely to instruct or inform students but to provide multiple forums for participants in the Center to become aware of their talents and to develop them. In so doing, we work to grow and transform both learner and teacher. Our faculty are a group of people who recognize the most basic fact about teaching: One teaches not only what one knows (“head stuff”) but far more powerfully and eloquently, one teaches who one is. The teachers at Jungian Center strive themselves to become more conscious, doing their own inner work, committed to spirit and life-long learning, in creative engagement with the world. In its commitment to holism, the Jungian Center affirms our interconnectedness with the web of life. Everyone in the Jungian Center community shares a commitment to social and economic justice, political concern and environmental awareness. So, in all our actions as an institution we strive to create a world that works for everyone.
Our Values
Some of the values that underpin the Jungian Center are common to educational organizations, e.g. freedom, diversity. Others are quite unusual and warrant comment. For example, we put great stress on consciousness, people becoming conscious of the unconsciousness and working to create more consciousness in the world. Toward this end, we encourage all participants in the Center to have an analysis with a certified Jungian analyst, so they can become aware of their psychic depths, and come to recognize the reality and wisdom of the psyche. Another important value we share with Carl Jung is that the psyche is real. Anyone engaging in his process of inner work comes to agree that the psyche is a living reality. More than just real, the psyche is wise. The community of learners that form the Jungian Center carries this into the operation of the Center: When making major decisions, we “sleep on it,” incubating dreams and looking to the wisdom of the psyche for guidance. In this, we hark back to the wisdom traditions of native peoples like the Naskapi and the Senoi. We also are set apart from mainstream values in our appreciation of smallness. “Small is beautiful,” as E.F. Schumacher noted in his environmental classic. Here at the Jungian Center we use this phrase to remind ourselves of our commitment to quality, rigor, inner wisdom, consciousness and psychic reality—all of which, in the context of contemporary Western culture, make the Jungian Center an oddity. Few indeed are interested in, or prepared to commit to the demands of their inner life. So practical realism echoes the words of an enlightened being who said: “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” The Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences has no aspirations to bigness. Bigger is not better. We thrive, at the Jungian Center, not by growing numbers, but by growing people into the fullness of their being.
