An Order Outside Time: A Jungian View of the Higher Self from Egypt to Christ »

The line of Western Spirituality began in Egypt and continued through the time of Christ. Has it become stalled in the years since?

Robert Clarke says yes, it has. In The Four Gold Keys, Clarke, going by his own spiritualization in the psychic depths, argued that the way out of Western civilization's essential atheism lies in the psychological teachings of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung.

In An Order Outside Time, Clarke reinterprets Western Spirituality, using Jungian symbolism, to show that the great stories of ancient Egypt and of the Old and New Testament are processes of what Jung called individuation. This is the individual's journey from lowest to highest Self; from Osiris to Horus, from Moses to Joshua, from David to Solomon, from John the Baptist to Jesus Christ. These pairings also reflect what Joseph Campbell calls the Hero's Journey, which may ultimately spiritualize the whole culture.

Clarke traces the connections between Egyptian, Jewish, and Christian mythology, and—concluding that the West's spiritual lineage has become stalled—maintains that we can attain wholeness only by making sense of the clues provided by our mythology. This is the royal line of Higher Self incarnations through the collective unconscious.

The ultimate example of individuation, Clarke says, is the Christ, who must now be further understood and developed. And, taking Christ as our symbol of the Self, direct experience of the sacred, by each of us, can enable us to achieve our greatest spiritual potential, both as individuals and as a whole culture. An Order Outside Time shows how that spiritual journey began and how it must becontinued.

Library Journal

An independent scholar and mystic based in England, Clarke (The Four Gold Keys: Dreams, Transformation of the Soul, and the Western Mystery Tradition) here claims that the psychology of Carl Jung-particularly his book Psychology of the Unconscious-provides the key to understanding the inner meaning of the religious tradition from ancient Egypt to modern times. Jung believed in a nonpersonal collective unconsciousness, a kind of Higher Self that connects the great religious figures of the past and humanity today; it is through dreams that this Higher Self is experienced. To that end, Clarke provides numerous accounts of dreams illustrating his points, as well as descriptions of religious figures and traditions in ancient Egypt. These observations are then used to demonstrate the development of Jewish and Christian religious traditions. If this approach sounds confusing, it's because it is. A more convincing and clear account is Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's The Jesus Mysteries. Not recommended.-James A. Overbeck, Atlanta-Fulton Cty. Lib. Syst. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.