There is another power of the imagination to which Paracelsus referred. He wrote that the imagination had the power to penetrate the heavens, passing from star to star, overcoming and moderating heaven. On the one hand, this description refers to the process I have just discussed, because the power to moderate the heavens by moving from star to

The transcendent function is the psychological mechanism that unites the opposites and helps bring the self to manifestation.

When doing active imagination work, the ego faces other dangers. The power of the unconscious should not be underestimated. Unable to maintain its own position, the ego could be deluged with the unconscious material and experience a psychotic episode. Or if the ego drops its perspective and buys into the unconscious too completely, the one-sided

The transcendent function is not only a change in consciousness, but an energetic change as well. When the transcendent function unites two previously separated opposites, the psychic energy that belongs to each is transformed, and part of it becomes available to the self. The self thereby gains psychic energy, which allows it to express itself

However, every so often, one may experience a figure that feels completely different. This figure feels as if it were coming from outside oneself, as if it existed in the external world, in the room in which one finds oneself, for example. One's eyes are open, and the felt sense is that one perceives a figure that does not come from within. The

In short, we are unafraid to express all sides of our personality and repress none. Our willingness to be all that we are, and to embrace all of our parts, allows us to experience ourselves as whole beings. We might think of the union of opposites proceeding in this manner as sequential; first one part of the personality expresses itself, then

“The experience of depth psychology, the process of individuation that must be undergone, is itself an esoteric event which changes people to the depth of their being, extends their consciousness, and brings their personality to the maturity of the whole person.”

As mentioned, an inner figure is a personification of a particular content of the unconscious, so that dealing with that figure is also dealing with the content in question. Just as, for example, one does not dream of a father complex per se but of a man in a three-piece suit who looks like one's boss, so in active imagination the inner content is

In the above quote, Jung explained how the self could orchestrate the psyche, including the collective unconscious, around the powerful center I call the manifest self. As a result of the work of individuation, the self gains the position of the dominant spiritual force within the psyche. When images manifest, they manifest as the self, and though