We begin our regular blog series today with an excerpt from Dr. Murray Stein out of Zurich.  He looks at how an individual person’s ability to align themselves within the collective can effect not only that person, but communities around them.  We plan to share regular writings from Dr. Stein as well as other commentaries on current social and collective Jungian themes.  We hope you enjoy today’s post!

- Steven Buser, MD

Jung was fond, as we know from many reports of his students, of the rain-maker story told by Richard Wilhelm in a lecture at the Psychological Club of Zurich in the 1920’s. As recounted by Jung in a seminar, Wilhelm told him that while he was living in Qingdao, China, there was a long dry spell in the region. The land in the countryside was utterly parched, and the crops were failing. As a consequence, many people were facing the prospect of starvation. Desperate, they tried to produce rainfall by performing all the religious rites they knew: the “Catholics made processions, the Protestants made prayers, and the Chinese burned joss-sticks and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no result. Finally the Chinese said, ‘We will fetch the rain-maker.’” So they sent a message to another part of the country asking for the assistance of a well known rain-maker. Eventually a “dried up old man appeared. The only thing he asked for was a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself in for three days. On the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was a great snow-storm at the time of the year when no snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the town was so full of rumours about the wonderful rain-maker that Wilhelm went to ask the man how he did it.” When asked, the old man replied: “I come from another country where things are in order. Here they are out of order, they are not as they should be in the ordinance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao and then naturally the rain came” (Visions, 1, p. 333). It was quite simple. He put himself in order, and this put the surrounding natural world in order. In turn, this brought into play what the community needed in order to survive, i.e., precipitation. Jung uses this story to illustrate the phenomenon of synchronicity.
Underscoring this magical (i.e., synchronistic) element in Confucian philosophy, Herbert Fingarette, in his informative work, Confucius – The Secular as Sacred, quotes from the Analects of Confucius: “Shun, the great sage-ruler, ‘merely placed himself gravely and reverently with his face due South (the ruler’s ritual posture); that was all’ (i.e., and the affairs of his reign proceeded without flaw). (15:4).” Correct ritual gesture, in other words, resolves issues at personal, social, and cosmic levels. When the ruler acts correctly and shows himself to be in balance and order, the kingdom will prosper. Fingarette writes further: “The magical element always involves great effects produced effortlessly, marvelously, with an irresistible power that is itself intangible, invisible, unmanifest. ‘With correct comportment, no commands are necessary, yet affairs proceed.’ (13:6) ‘The character of a noble man is like wind, that of ordinary men like grass; when the wind blows the grass must bend’ (12:19) ‘To govern by te is to be like the North Polar Star; it remains in place while all the other stars revolve in homage about it.’ (2:1)” (Fingarette, p. 4)
The idea behind Wilhelm’s story and this aspect of Confucian philosophy is that the individual (especially the extraordinary or the enlightened individual) has the capacity to affect society and the cosmos (for good or ill) because the individual, society, and the cosmos are intimately connected parts of a single reality. Plato also portrayed such a state of harmony pertaining among individual, society, and cosmos: “An ancient ethical theory like Plato’s Republic argued that a just person in a just society should be understood as a person with a harmoniously structured psyche located in a harmoniously ordered society which itself was located in a harmoniously ordered cosmos. The idea that harmony went all the way down and all the way up gave a sense of purpose – and thus comfort – to human life” (Lear, p.197). The repetition of this idea in so many historical and cultural contexts argues for its status as an archetypal idea.
This idea carries with it the direct consequence that individuation has a profoundly ethical dimension and does not proceed in isolation, apart from the greater whole. If an individual achieves integration at a personal level – that is, finds a way to unite and blend the psyche’s inherent polarities within the realm of personality – this will facilitate order and harmony (Tao) as well in the surrounding social and natural worlds. Conversely, if the individual falls into disorder and disintegrates at a personal level and remains there, this will have a deleterious effect on the surrounding world. John Donne’s famous words, “No man is an island,” speak to this point. Individuation includes ethical behavior in the deepest sense, in that this psychological and spiritual development fosters development also in the wider human community and equilibrium in the natural world. It is not limited to the individual. Without this deep connection to society and cosmos, individuation could be seen as simply the pursuit of a person’s narrow self-interest and private fulfillment without benefit to, and indeed at the expense of, society and environment. If left there, such narcissistic self-indulgence could thus be called seriously into question on ethical grounds. One is taking from the community and the world and returning nothing of value. In this other view of individuation, however, there is no conflict between individuation and ethics. They exist side by side in profound harmony, the one deepening and reinforcing the other.
From teachings and stories such as these we might conclude that the individuation process, which requires living closely and consciously in relation to the dynamics of the self, coincides seamlessly with proper conduct (moral and ethical behavior) in the deepest sense, and further that this harmony between individuation and ethics produces beneficial synchronistic effects on the individual’s surrounding worlds of society and nature.
At a more concrete level of experience, however, people who struggle with individuation issues in daily life often do not consider or recognize that such smooth harmony prevails between their individuation choices and the moral order. Quite often, in fact, these two areas seem to diverge radically, the one demanding individual choice and responsibility and the other conformity to social rules and customs. If anything, it seems that individuation and morality exist side by side in an uneasy alliance and often in outright conflict with one another. From experience, it must be conceded that no individuation process proceeds very far without needing to break free from too restrictive collective mores and customs. The social conformist is not an individuating personality. So does individuation not, then, defy moral standards at certain points? Is there not inherent conflict between them?
From “The Ethics of Individuation, The Individuation of Ethics” by Murray Stein (Quadrant 2007)