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    Transformation: Understanding the Three Levels of Mascul
    Transformation: Understanding the Three Levels of Mascul
    Transformation: Understanding the Three Levels of Mascul
    Ebook88 pages1 hour

    Transformation: Understanding the Three Levels of Mascul

    By Robert A. Johnson

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    About this ebook

    Presenting an original and vital model for psychological development, the brilliant and pioneering author of He, She, and We offers a new understanding of the stages of personal growth through which maturity and wholeness can be achieved.

    Using quintessential figures from classical literature--Don Quixote, Hamlet, and Faust--Robert Johnson shows us three clearly defined stages of consciousness development. He demonstrates how the true work of maturity is to grow through these levels to the self-realized state of completion and harmony.

    In Johnson's view, we all reach the stages depicted by Don Quixote, Hamlet, and Faust at various times of our lives. The three represent levels of consciousness within us, each vying for dominance. Don Quixote portrays the innocent child, while Hamlet stands for our self-conscious need to act and feel in control though we have no real connection to our inner selves. Faust embodies the master of the true self, who has gained awareness by working through the stages.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJul 21, 2009
    ISBN9780061957772
    Transformation: Understanding the Three Levels of Mascul
    Author

    Robert A. Johnson

    Robert A. Johnson, a noted lecturer and Jungian analyst, is also the author of He, She, We, Inner Work, Ecstasy, Transformation, and Owning Your Own Shadow.

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    Reviews for Transformation

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Very interesting, specially Faust analysis.
    • 5/5
      This book was so well done I love this whole trilogy and I cried so much at the ending!
    • 3/5
      I really didn't like the ending to this book either. It just seemed like it wasn't right. I really liked the other two books, especially the second book to the series, but this book was just not right. I wish I could go back in time and tell her why this ending never worked and make her rewrite it but it's too late now. It makes me sad that the ending sucked so much and it disappointed so many.
    • 4/5
      Well, I really liked the rest of the Water series but the ending to this book was just a disappointment to me. I really thought that it could have been better. I really didn't expect the ending, but overall it is still a great series.

    Book preview

    Transformation - Robert A. Johnson

    Transformation

    Understanding the Three Levels of Masculine Consciousness

    Robert A. Johnson

    Contents

    Author’s Note

    Introduction

    1. Two-Dimensional Man: Don Quixote

    2. Three-Dimensional Man: Hamlet

    3. Four-Dimensional Man: Faust (Part I)

    4. Four-Dimensional Man: Faust (Part II)

    Conclusion

    About the Author

    Other Books by Robert A. Johnson

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Author’s Note

    Transformation is a study of the evolution of consciousness through its three main levels of development and is predominantly masculine in character. This is not to say that it is the exclusive property of males, and it should be clear that it is as applicable to women as to men. Though each of our three stories depicts the passage of a man through the stages of consciousness, it is woman’s journey as much as man’s. Since English usage has not yet found a term for those characteristics that apply to both men and women, masculine pronouns and references have been retained throughout.

    Introduction

    Tradition indicates that three levels of consciousness are available to us: simple consciousness, not often seen in our modern technological world; complex consciousness, the usual state of educated Western man; and an enlightened state of consciousness, known only to a very few individuals, which is the culmination of human evolution and can be attained only by highly motivated people after much work and training.

    Proverbs in many languages point out these three levels of consciousness. One story, for instance, relates that the simple man comes home in the evening wondering what’s for dinner, the complex man comes home pondering the imponderables of fate, and the enlightened man comes home wondering what’s for dinner. Simple man and enlightened man have much in common, including a direct, uncomplicated view of life, and so they react in similar ways. The only true difference between them is that the enlightened man is conscious of his condition, while the simple man is not. Complex man, on the other hand, spends much of his time worrying and often is in a state of anxiety.

    A Zen proverb states: When I was young and free, the mountains were the mountains, the river was the river, the sky was the sky. Then I lost my way, and the mountains were no longer the mountains, the river was no longer the river, the sky was no longer the sky. Then I attained satori (the Zen term for enlightenment), and the mountains were again the mountains, the river was again the river, and the sky was again the sky.

    Our biblical tradition takes us from the simple perfection of the Garden of Eden through every imaginable chaos and leads us finally to the heavenly Jerusalem. Again, three levels of consciousness.

    Our psychological traditions also validate the existence of these three levels. Fritz Kunkel, a psychotherapist who worked in Los Angeles from the 1930s through the 1950s, observed that human beings proceed from red-blooded to pale-blooded to gold-blooded consciousness, or from simple to superior. This was his simple way of describing the three levels of consciousness open to us. Dr. Esther Harding has pointed out that psychic energy can manifest itself in three ways: as instinct, as ego consciousness, and as investment in the Self. Man evolves from acting instinctively to putting his psychic energy under the control of his ego. Then he must evolve further, to place his psychic energy under the control of the Self, that higher consciousness that is variously called God, enlightenment, satori, or samadhi.

    One looks in vain for examples of the man of simple consciousness in our complex Western world. We often project this quality onto dark-skinned minorities and women--and then resent them for it. Writing of his experiences at Walden Pond, Thoreau chronicles a complex man’s attempts to regain the simplicity of his life. Our own counterculture movement of the 1960s was an attempt to restore a simplicity and contact with Mother Earth and natural living. Mahatma Gandhi urged India to retain its simple consciousness, symbolized by the spinning wheel. He would have had every Indian live a simple life, spinning his own cloth, cleaning his own house and latrine, and so on. India nicely sidestepped this advice by isolating Gandhi in its pantheon of saints, and his life has little effect on present-day India.

    When I first went to India I had been warned of the horrors I would encounter--lepers, corpses on the street, poverty, maimed children, and beggars. All of this was true, and I withstood the impact of the darkness as best I could. I had not been warned, however, of the great happiness of the people. When I saw people who had so little to be happy about, living in an unshakable happiness, I was completely thrown. I was witnessing the miracle of simple man finding happiness in a rich inner world, not in the pursuit of some desired goal.*

    Later I inquired into the origin of the word happy and found that it derives from the verb to happen. In other words, happiness is to be found simply

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