Book Review Decoding Jungs Metaphysics The Archet
Book Review Decoding Jungs Metaphysics The Archet
12-1-2021
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Recommended Citation
Boeving, N. G. (2021). Book review: Decoding Jung's metaphysics: The archetypal semantics of an
experiential universe. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 40 (2). https://doi.org/doi.org/
10.24972/ijts.2021.40.2.121
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BOOK REVIEW
Decoding Jung's Metaphysics:
The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe
(2021; Iff Books)
by Bernardo Kastrup
Reviewed by
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us.
If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head,
what are we reading for? . . . we need the books that affect us like a
disaster . . . . A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
—Franz Kafka (1958/1977, p. 16)
Only the Wounded Metaphysician Heals: volume (and there are many), as well as the eight
Reflections on the Work of Bernardo Kastrup that proceeded it, Kastrup neither promises, nor
A
stronomers calculate the rate of star presents, any kind of final theory. The universe, both
formation in our galaxy to be about three for Jung, as well as for Kastrup, is dialogical, not
Sun-like celestial bodies per year. The declarative, and both philosophers expertly avoid
appearance of a new star in any given academic the sweeping, hubristic extravagances of other
discipline, however, is a far rarer event: about writers who pepper their work with periods where
once in a generation. With the recent publication question marks ought to have been placed instead.
of Decoding Jung’s Metaphysics: The Archetypal And yet, despite this book’s dramatic interrogative
Semantics of an Experiential Universe (Kastrup, subversion, there are questions Kastrup does
2021b) a bright new coruscation has been fixed not ask—questions that might require, for a full
in the firmament of transpersonal scholarship, decoding of Jung’s metaphysics, a full decoding of
but unlike the constituents of the official 88 Kastrup himself.
constellations, Kastrup belongs to a number of I chose to open this review with a quote
academic asterisms, patterns of bright light that from Kafka, because I believe, as he did, that a
share in several constellations. One is fixed, the book should affect us like a disaster. And yet, as
other fluid—and neither this book nor the person a passionate and longtime reader of transpersonal
who wrote it can be properly pigeonholed in any scholarship, I can count on one hand the number
one disciplinary configuration. Instead, Kastrup’s of books that have woken me up with a blow
light shares in the pattern integrities of multiple to the head. The first, Ken Wilber’s (1977) The
disciplines: philosophy of mind, science of Spectrum of Consciousness, was nothing short of
consciousness, religious studies, and transpersonal a textual shaktipat—a near-electric transmission
psychology, to name but a few. Nevertheless, that announced itself as a calling, awakening me
despite the remarkable achievements of this with such a voltaic jolt that I knew, long before
Review: Decoding
International Jung's
Journal of Transpersonal International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 121
Metaphysics Studies, 40(2), 121–128
.
https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2021.40.2.121
I had finished the last chapter, that this wild, not in the mystical literatures of the world, but
epistemologically plural field was to be my vocation it is rare, indeed, in someone from Kastrup’s
in the truest Latinate sense of the word. It was, and background, who entered the humanities by way
is, my “spiritual calling.” But in the decades of of the sciences—the latter of which still traffics in
a life spent in books, there have been none that crude computer metaphors for consciousness and
came close to approximating the intensity of that remains entrenched in the disappointing fictions of
first vibrational impact I experienced at 13 while the dominant neuronarrative. And quite frankly, we
reading Wilber. That is, until now. need his help.
Transpersonal psychology was "the mouth One need only glance at the shocking
of a labyrinth” into which I entered (through disparities between endowments in graduate
Wilber) to meet the Mystery and to become forever programs for the arts versus the sciences to see
“changed . . . [having been] eaten and digested by how the financial eclipse of the former by the
God” (Weil, 1951/2009, p. 46). Philosopher and latter mirrors a cultural one—the great divide and
mystic Simone Weil went on to write that whoever epistemological civil war that British novelist and
undergoes such a transformation will remain by the scientist C. P. Snow first identified in his 1959
entrance, “so that he can gently push all those who lecture The Two Cultures. The bald, uncomfortable
near into the opening” (p. 46). truth is that we still have quite a way to go before
This present review of Bernardo Kastrup’s reaching any kind of cultural accord between
(2021b) latest book is my gentle push into the mouth Snow's (1959) "two cultures.” Kastrup has emerged
of the labyrinth and into the coiled complexities as a strong proponent of metaphysical idealism, and
of Carl Jung, Kastrup himself, and the tradition of his own uncollected works may together be read
metaphysical idealism to which they both belong. as a significant textual advance in the dialogical
And while Weil (1951/2009) was speaking of process of understanding consciousness.
“the beauty of the world” (p. 46), we find in both Humorously enough, Kastrup's dissertation
Kastrup and in Jung, that the cosmos itself, in all supervisor in the philosophy department for his
of its manifestations, both visible and invisible, is second Ph.D. (the first one being in computer
coextensive with the mind of God. To enter the engineering) gave him the name of “the belligerent
world, then, is to enter the mouth of the labyrinth, philosopher” (Kastrup, 2021a). The sobriquet fits
and in doing so, to enter the mind of the godhead him like a Starfleet uniform. The word belligerent
itself. comes from the Latin belligerare: to wage war. And
A Call to War make no mistake about it, Kastrup is at war with