The dangers of becoming inflated when receiving vision from the collective unconscious and this is what I think happened to the apostle Paul.
......It will be remembered that in the analysis of the personal unconscious the first things
to be added to consciousness are the personal contents and I suggested that these
contents which have been repressed, but are capable of becoming conscious, should
be called the personal unconscious. I also showed that to annex the deeper layers
of the unconscious, which I have called the collective unconscious, produces an
extension of the personality leading to the state of inflation. (Jung 1953, 7:2433
)......
Such misapplication of yoga leads to positive and negative inflation and all their attendant
ills of which Jung speaks repeatedly and eloquently throughout his works. For instance:
In projection, he vacillates between an extravagant and pathological deification of
the doctor, and a contempt bristling with hatred. In introjection, he gets involved in
a ridiculous self-deification, or else a moral self-laceration. The mistake he makes
in both cases comes from attributing to a person the contents of the collective
4 lha’i nga rgyal.
Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation • 163
unconscious. In this way he makes himself or his partner either god or devil. Here
we see the characteristic effect of the archetype: it seizes hold of the psyche with
a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. It
causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation), loss of free will, delusion, and
enthusiasm in good and evil alike (Jung 1953, 7:110)....
Positive inflation of the religious sort can lead to assumptions of grandeur, viewing oneself
as having the universal panacea:
The second possible mode of reaction is identification with the collective psyche. This
would be equivalent to acceptance of the inflation, but now exalted into a system. In
other words, one would be the fortunate possessor of the great truth that was only
waiting to be discovered, of the eschatological knowledge that means the healing of
the nations. This attitude does not necessarily signify megalomania in direct form,
but megalomania in the milder and more familiar form it takes in the reformer, the
prophet, and the martyr. (Jung 1953, 7:260)
Just as the prophet convinced that he/she has the final truth is inflated through identification
with the forces of deep contents, so is the humble disciple, affecting the posture of only
following the master’s dictums:
But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy,
subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple.…
The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against
having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in
the sun of a semidivine being.…Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out
of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own
convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement.…[J]ust as the prophet is
a primordial image from the collective psyche, so also is the disciple of the prophet.
(Jung 1953, 7:263-265)
In both cases inflation is brought about by the collective unconscious, and the independence
of the individuality suffers injury. In a similar vein:
These few examples may suffice to show what kind of spirit animated these
movements. They were made up of people who identified themselves (or were
identified) with God, who deemed themselves supermen, had a critical approach to
the gospels, followed the promptings of the inner man, and understood the kingdom
of heaven to be within. In a sense, therefore, they were modern in their outlook, but
they had a religious inflation instead of the rationalistic and political psychosis that is
the affliction of our day. (Jung 1969, 9:140).....
Correspondingly, inflation is of two varieties, negative and positive, the former being when
the ego is subsumed in the collective unconscious and latter when the ego takes too much to
itself. Jung says:
With the integration of projections—which the merely natural man in his unbounded
naïveté can never recognize as such—the personality becomes so vastly enlarged that
the normal ego-personality is almost extinguished. In other words, if the individual
identifies himself with the contents awaiting integration, a positive or negative inflation
results. Positive inflation comes very near to a more or less conscious megalomania;
negative inflation is felt as an annihilation of the ego. (Jung 1966, 16:472)
