Robert A. Johnson is a noted Jungian analyst and author of many books including Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life written with Jerry M. Ruhl. This six-hour session with Johnson took place at his home in California, and it offers a rich and rewarding glimpse into his questing life and spiritual adventures.
At the heart of this is what he calls "the golden world," a term coined by Mircea Eliade. Johnson uses it to describe heaven, a sublime state of enlightenment, or an awesome encounter with great beauty. Early in this recording, he describes three experiences of it when he was eleven and had his leg amputated, when he was sixteen and saw a sunrise, and when he arrived in India at the age of 50. These ecstatic experiences defy description in language and are closer to music.
Throughout this discussion, Johnson shares the important role that India, friends, active imagination, and both Eastern and Western religion have played is his quest for wholeness. Here are some things to pay special attention to on this recording:
• Commentary on the art of interpreting dreams
• Suggestions on how to dialogue with the unconscious
• Ways to trust the "slender threads " of life
• The uses of typology
• Making the most of life's "nodal points"
• Encountering the shadow
• The crisis of feeling in our culture
• Death in Indian philosophy
Johnson on The Golden World is a meaning-maker par excellence.
