Spiral Dynamics
In his essay entitled “The Spirit Mercurius,” Jung (1967) describes five levels of ego-consciousness. The first level corresponds to participation mystique when the ego is undifferentiated from the inner and outer worlds; as such there is no consciousness and no world, only unconsciousness. “There is an absence of awareness of a difference between oneself and one’s perceptions on the one hand and the object in question on the other” (Stein, 1998, p. 179). The second level begins the act of discrimination separating man from nature and by extension separating ego from the unconscious.
Slowly this differentiation between self and other and between inner and outer increases and sharpens…. This does not mean the projection has been overcome, but only that it has become more localized, focusing on a few objects rather than on the whole world. (p. 180)
At this second level, the parents become the carrier of divine projections. The third level adds “a new phase of cognitive development” relating “to the ability to reach a level of abstraction that is relatively free of concretism” (p. 181). The projections do not need external concrete objects; they can be concepts, symbols, and ideologies. “This third level is marked by a belief in a ‘higher’ and ‘good’ God” (Jung, 1967, p. 200, [CW 13, para. 248). Thus, it is God who is omniscient and omnipotent, not the human parents.
As long as one believes that an actual God will punish or reward one in the afterlife, this indicates a Stage 3 level of consciousness. The projection has simply become transferred from the human parent to a more abstract, mythological figure. (Stein, 1998, p. 183)
What began as a stirring from the unconscious has, at this third level, become attributable to God.
The fourth stage represents the radical extinction of projections, even in the form of theological and ideological abstractions. This extinction leads to the creation of an “empty center” which Jung identified with modernity…. The sense of soul – of grand meaning and purpose in life, immortality, divine origin, a “God within” – is replaced by utilitarian and pragmatic values. … Humans come to see themselves as cogs in a huge socio-economic machine, and their expectations for meaning are scaled down to bite size chunks. One settles for moments of pleasure and the satisfaction of manageable desires. Or one becomes depressed! Gods no longer inhabit the heavens, and demons are converted into psychological symptoms and brain chemical imbalances. … Principles are only relatively valid, and values are seen as derived from cultural norms and expectations. Everything cultural appears to be manufactured and without inherent meaning. Nature and history are regarded as the product of chance and the random play of impersonal forces. Here we arrive at the attitude and feeling-tone of the modern person: secular, atheistic, perhaps slightly humanistic. … The modern stance is relativistic. (p. 183)
The fourth level troubled Jung the most. He foresaw the loss of “spirit” having grave repercussions in the world because the unconscious stirring is now attributed to ego. “Thus the ego is radically inflated in the modern person and assumes a secret God-Almighty position” (pp. 183-184). If there is no authority outside of oneself, then the potential for anything goes could lead to disastrous results in the world. “The Stage 4 person is no longer controlled by societal conventions related either to people or values. Consequently the ego can consider unlimited possibilities of action” (p. 184) unconstrained by morality. All four of these levels relate to ego development in the first half of life. “The person who has achieved the self-critical and reflective ego characteristic of Stage 4 without falling into megalomaniac inflation has done extremely well in developing consciousness, and is highly evolved in Jung’s assessment” (p. 185).
The fifth and final level of consciousness in Jung’s theory “assumes that the unconscious exists and has a reality just like any other existent” (Jung, 1967, p. 201, [CW 13, para. 249). In this stage ego limitations are recognized and psychic reality is granted to the unconscious. Thus, “the psyche itself then becomes the object of scrutiny and reflection” (Stein, 1998, p. 186) giving rise to a new center, the self or what I have called the soul. “To approach the archetypal images and to relate to them consciously and creatively becomes the centerpiece of individuation and makes up the fifth stage of consciousness” (Stein, 1998, p. 186). The center of consciousness moves from ego to soul, from being primarily concerned with the physical world to being guided by the internal and spiritual world. Jung’s individuation process begins here, at the fifth stage of consciousness. This stage corresponds to Wilber’s integral level of consciousness. The move from level four to level five in Jung’s theory is described as a move from the first-tier to the second-tier in the Spiral Dynamics model. It is described as a
quantum jump into “second-tier thinking.” Clare Graves referred to this as a “momentous leap,” where “a chasm of unbelievable depth of meaning is crossed.” In essence, with the second-tier consciousness, one can think both vertically and horizontally, using both hierarchies and heterarchies; one can, for the first time, vividly grasp the entire spectrum of interior development, and thus see that each level, each meme, each wave is crucially important for the health of the overall spiral. (Wilber, 2000a, p. 51)
The move from the first-tier to the second-tier is a move from being driven by fear to being motivated by love.
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