This is Post 8 in the ‘Mandala of Love’ book blog series.
Students of Carl Jung’s ideas will be aware that he associated the four physical elements (Earth, Water, Air, and Fire), and the four perceptual-psychological functions (Sensation, Thinking, Feeling, and Intuition-Volition). These four perceptual-psychological functions are usually arranged as a mandala, like a compass rose, with the rational-discriminative functions of Feeling and Thinking forming an opposition across the horizontal axis at West and East; and the perceptual-creative functions of Intuition / Volition and Sensation forming an opposition in the vertical axis at North and South.
On a superficial level Sensation, Thinking, Feeling and Intuition-Volition are egoic functions – the four primary functions by which individuals know and relate to their experience, and construct their identity. Jung, however, named these the Four Functions of Consciousness. Fully aware that these four functions are, in essence, four aspects of the Divine, he presented a rich and compelling analysis of how the potential for Consciousness and self-realisation is, sadly, usually unrealised, and how the same four functions give rise instead, to the various styles of limited egoic consciousness, each with a particular style of unconsciousness that goes with it. Continue reading
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