Many faces, one Self, a light that shines within and upon all, with varying recognition. This is the best way I can sum up the significance of Jung’s final painting, one that visually sums up the most fundamental dynamic in his psychology, and the fields that explore how human potential can be actualised more broadly. 

What was the Red Book? Why Was It Created? 

The Red Book is in great part, Jung’s own documented journey of his individuation, a Jungian term referring to the process of becoming psychologically whole. 

By the time he started to experiment with his inner world and and document it in 1913, Jung was dissatisfied with a lot of things in his life and work. 

Through his clinical and academic research, he was becoming sure that there was a collective conscious and unconscious, which could not be scientifically verified in a lab or outer environment for all to see, but only expressed through the qualitative and irrational: symbols, myths, religion, premonitions, meaningful coincidences, and various hypnotic or dissociated states that put the conscious personality in the back seat. These dually held the capacity for dangerous psychopathology, as well as vision, beauty, healing, and profundities that like grasping water with a hand, eluded the grasp of logic and language. Studying hypnotic and trance states was well in vogue in and before Jung’s time. 

Despite much fruitful collab over the years, the tension between his and Freud’s views on the unconscious had been mounting. Their relations finally broke apart when Jung published Symbols of Transformation in 1913. It critiqued Freud’s sexual-material paradigm of how the psyche works and evolves over time, one in which forms like religion or spirituality are merely sublimations of sexual-survival motifs and desires. 

For Jung, he wanted to point out the limits to this approach and expand upon it; a crucial point that is reflected in this artwork’s making, is that libido, or creative energy, is not just bio-physical, but also psycho-spiritual. For Jung, mentalised objects such as symbols or intentions like making plans to fulfill a desire, are elaborations of the same base energy, or life force. This life force is expressed via one route as the perpetuation of species through sex, genome, and ecology, all for their own creative sake ultimately, but also in other ways such as awe-inspiring and tear-dropping music and art, which also exist for their own sake, but at a different gradient of this life force energy, of which matter, mind, emotions, instinct, sex, and psyche all participate in. The human being encapsulates all of these aspects of life force. 

Exemplified by the wider symbiosis of nature or the geometries that are so common in religious temples, bio-physicality and psycho-spirituality both express creative patterns. For Jung, the ultimate creative pattern maker and centre is the Self, the subject of this final painting. 

In choosing to make his dissent from Freud public, Jung lost a lot of contacts, credibility, and income; his external and internal life came apart concurrently. Jung was weary of language’s limitations, his colleagues, and like Nietzsche, the vacuum in meaning-making and the one-sidedness of life that scientific-materialism was starting to introduce in the west. He couldn’t ignore the intuitions, feelings and visions that had brought him to this juncture. 

Jung was magnetised by the bizzare dreams, events, and visions that had occurred in his life. So much so, that he decided to dive into his unconscious and explore it with the kind of daring, determination, and attentiveness that an explorer brings to a new land. 

Out of this, Jung created vast tracts of dialogues with inner figures and painted many of these encounters in the Red Book, many of which can be found online. Here though, we will focus on the final painting, the summa of this process before Jung went on to write his sprawling works, out of which, the Red Book was their ‘nucleus’. 

Red Book Painting 169: Interpreting Jung’s Final Painting

The most eye-catching part of the painting is the shining light arising from a mandala, which for Jung, is a symbol of the Self, an archetype of wholeness that is synonymous with the God in existence. And around the mandala and it’s structures — a central square, emanating petals, and then refracted light  —  there is a crowd of people. The people are of varying descriptions, facing different ways, and they are closer or further away from this light. 

Some of the people close to the light are from various ways of life, some appear to be aristocrats, ordinary people, merchants, and intellectuals. There’s a few priestly figures, many being mid-way from the light, facing towards it, with a couple also facing away. 

The faces, depending on their direction and distance to the light, appear more fair and contented, while others are turning dark green, and towards the edges of the painting, are deathly and skeletal; their humanity, life, and flesh seeming to be stripped apart from them in proportion to their apartness from the Self. 

Now, let’s dive into an interpretation. 

The painting links death with distance from God, and distance from God, to decay, to coldness, to ugliness, to unhappinesses, and to darkness. For those going closer and/or facing the light, they appear more illuminated, peaceful, in awe, curious, and content. 

The fundamental dynamic I mentioned earlier is this: the human being can come together, become more whole and connected, more whole in perception. And they have another choice; they can come apart, be divided within, less connected, and feel lacking and thus be at war with the outside. The painting is an attempt to visualise this dynamic symbolically. 

This painting thematically concerns itself with humanity’s relationship to the totality of Creation of which it is a part, the Creation being represented by shapes, colour, and light arising from a source. The geometry and structures of the mandala represent the nested and interacting Laws or Patterns of Creation, these patterns of creation are what Jung refers to as Archetypes, and what Plato refers to as the divine Forms. 

Now, this theme of our relationship to a Totality, is not about religion per-say, it depicts something that just is what it is, regardless of names and labels. This whole theme, for each human being, is a matter of feeling, orientation, intention, direction, exploration, and appreciation of the wholeness of creation and themselves as beings in existence. 

In Jung’s psychology, this painting points to the Self, the totality of the Psyche (A Greek word in origin, referring to breath, life, soul), or put another way, the God in existence. The painting is about the importance of our connection and realisation of the Self. 

When we speak of a true God, we’re talking of a creative power that both transcends and permeates its own creation. Any limitation put on God is a contradiction in terms, so to speak of anything that God, or this whole, does not ultimately will/allow, know about, or see as good, is to contradict the definition of the word and the wider wholeness of which we’re a part. 

And to say that we are separate from all this is a misunderstanding too. However, there is the appearance of separation, between each other, and also for many, from God. This has important implications, not just for when we mistake this appearance as reality (facing/moving away from the light), but also for a way upward as individuals and as a collective. To overcome this mere appearance, a way of being, relating, doing, believing, and thinking that embraces a wholesome, loving orientation to ourselves and others, can all be helpful routes to the realisation of Self. 

A few simple proofs that we are connected: think of trees as the external half of our lungs, and vice versa. Electrons and sub-atomic particles in our bodies are entangled with others that are light years away. The universe is a grand field, a kind of knitwork, that holds all of its contents together. Again, to see, believe, and act as if we are disconnected from all of this, is to be like the characters turning away from the light in the painting. 

The happenings of evil and sin, the things these words point to, is predicated on an idea and belief in separation, this then allows inharmonious acts to be done to an ‘other’. Without harm to self, or so it seems. It does not matter whether one is a priest or a politician, conscious contact and harmony with the Creation is independent of roles, outfits, and titles, which is why the priests are not necessarily closest to the Self in the painting, but of course, there are religious figures who are too! 

Many of the people closest to and not so close to this light also look ‘ordinary’; it is hard to discern what they do in their outer life, and this is correct. Someone can be ‘spiritual’ in the sense of feeling this conscious connection to the creation, but not wear it as a kind of persona. 

Teachers, construction workers, athletes, cleaners, and business people can all know and participate in God. The devil as a symbolic figure, is also a servant or aspect of God’s workings. To deny the devil in one’s self is to fall into his hands! That is, to overlook or outrightly deny our own capacity to misuse our intelligence in bondage to animalistic and fearful drives. These serve to regress the human being, while all too often, the people who make an effort to pronounce their goodness are those who most succumb to these tendencies. So, rather than deny our instinctive qualities, the task of any worthy psychology or spirituality, is to exhalt and integrate our drives in harmony with the wider faculties that make us human. 

What is it that we can do practically to be like the characters facing the light and closing their distance with it? In this painting, direction, sight, and willingness are the key practical themes. It’s not necessarily, as Jung points out, about doing ‘the right’ thing on its own. But rather, to become more conscious, aware, whole, and from this basis, consciously choose actions that reflect what we have realised we are and can be! 

So there is not a need to set the world externally to rights, especially as this work on ourselves begins. Rather, it is key to turn inward and commit to our transformation. Where this meets with practical tools, is in practices like inner child work, shadow work, active imagination, building a gratitude habit, facing our inner and outer fears, and meditation. These are just some ways to progress our individuation. 

So, you do not just ‘do’ your way into divinity, intention matters. To do good from a place of fear or expecting reward dulls the virtue of a good action. You embrace divinity instead at the levels of awareness, emotion, mind, and spirit. For Jung, religion was an ambivalent topic because it reflected divinity, but it did so in a pale way; it can end up being reduced to impotent rituals, dogmas, misinterpretations, and recitals. 

Not only this, various kinds of historical corruption has also played a role. Whether it’s the contradiction between the teaching and the institution (e.g violence), or corruptions or alterations of doctrine, this has the effect of diluting, distorting, and dividing divinity up for societies. In Christianity, the dissociation and intense distaste for humanity’s shadow and raw instinctive aspects is to such a degree, that in many cases this religious vehicle has ended up encouraging the sorts of behaviours it is seeking to put an end to! 

That is also why, for Jung, the first big step someone can take to become conscious and psychologically whole, is to confront one’s own Shadow; the discarded, rejected and demonised aspects of themselves. When these parts are not conscious and disconnected, these denied aspects are projected outward onto others as well. On the one hand, this unconscious process causes a lot of unneeded conflict and suffering, and on the other hand, others can then be invaluable mirrors to us as well, helping us to awaken to the parts of us seeking to be healed. 

White and black are not colours, they can be called shades, and these two shades are participated in by all of the colours. So, to get to know the light, you need to also know the dark, just as the darkness of space finds itself recognised with the help of light, one cannot come to consciousness of themselves and the creation without both! 

Is there a way up and a way down in the end? 

Yes! It can be summed up by the phrase ‘all for one, and one for all’. This topic and the painting may come across as loaded with all sorts of deep moral associations that can feel disturbing. However, this should not deter anyone, because harsh moral judgements are beside the point. The key is really to relax and be accepting of yourself, your experience, and your life from moment to moment. Many positive and life-enhancing things can follow from living attentively, presently, and gratefully. To live life in sympathy with life itself. 

The idea that ‘you’ did every bad thing you can think of as a separate self is an illusion, and so is the idea that all the good things that you did was just down to you, too. No separate thing exists in isolation, it exists in connection and relationship. Something that may have seemed good from a viewpoint could actually have turned out to have disharmonious consequences, and vice versa. Connecting to the Self is a craft of connectivity. 

The point is that, with everything being one, we can accept ourselves as unique beings while allowing ourselves to connect with the whole. This then empowers us to make better choices from that more wholesome, connected standpoint. The context of everything that happens in a life is essentially infinite, so the key is to relax and cultivate a love and understanding for one’s self and the outer life. 

Without being with ourselves, loving ourselves, and knowing ourselves, it is actually much harder to know others. Then, a person who does not know, love, and accept themselves, is a person who can equally waste their lives away, or else set out on a big mission to change the world from a place of compulsion. Loaded with assumptions and underlying pain, their output can end up hurting life.

Jung’s painting here, at least for me, is about establishing connection to this awesome wholeness within ourselves; to aspire to something truly beautiful,  whole, and good, that we can set aside enslavement in its various forms to the petty concerns, resentments, and struggles of our lives, but instead to really live them, love them, learn from them, and enjoy them. This awesomeness is absolutely coupled with appreciating the ordinariness, because they are expressions of one and the same thing. 

As a natural consequence of orienting to the Whole and being willing to look at and accept ourselves; to bring ourselves together so as not to remain divided within, one finds their inner divinity; they find God, they realise wholeness, and then life goes on, as it always has. 

Thank you very much for reading, until next time!

Kyle