The unconscious/spiritual world speaks in images and symbols, which is also the language of dreams.
Also, we come across symbols and imagery in myths, alchemy, depth analysis and in religious symbols. C.G. Jung has written about the relation of the king-symbol to consciousness. “The king represents ego-consciousness, the subject of all subjects, as an object. His fate in mythology portrays the rising and setting of this most glorious and most divine of all the phenomena of creation, without which the world would not exist as an object.”
Next we hear about the symbolic sequence of the death and renewal of the king. It is the basic image of the individuation process and therefore of every depth analysis. “Sick king, enfeebled by age, about to die”. Jung says that corresponds to the “ego-bound state with feeble psychic dominant”. In other words the psychic dominant, the center around which the psyche has been living is enfeebled, in a decrepit state. And this is true on the level of individual psychological experience as well as it applies to the collective psyche.
There is a conflict between conscious and unconscious. And to come to a synthesis the King’s son, a hermaphrodite, a rotundum, will be born. It corresponds psychologically to the formation of a new dominant, a new center which is accompanied by circular symbols of the Self. But until that is experienced the individual has to devote himself to a certain level of psychological development; then comes a time, when subject and object are reversed. When the ego, who all its life has experienced itself as the knower, becomes the known object. Then, the state of subjecthood is transferred to the other, and the subject – the ego – becomes the known object perceived by that other subject.
Jung speaks of the king, – perceived “from another planet” – or as perceived by “the Eye of God. If the person pays attention to dreams, his ego also begins to realize that its being seen and known from another standpoint. If one goes far enough in dream work then sooner or later the full realization does dawn and then out of that realization, out of that reversal of centrality that the experience brings about, comes the rebirth of the king/ego that Jung speaks of as the formation off a new dominant, the Self.
Who has done this work and realizes the meaning of it to some extent in his or her own life, the alchemists call it “The Great Work”, that individual is simultaneously contributing to the process of the transformation of the God image, the Self in the collective psyche. And when one is dealing with this level of psyche, one is, to some extent or another, serving the generality. Just as an individual psyche is structured around a personal dominant center, so a civilization is also structured around a collective dominant – a God-image/imago Dei. And it is abundantly evident that our age is going through a death and renewal of its God-image.
May each and everyone of us be blessed to experience Self, the messianic consciousness, and may we serve the world from this level of awareness.