Meditation

1. Etymology

Meditation names a technique of focused introspection. Related: Eastern and traditional Western religious exercises; Jungian use for realizing projections.

2. Plain summary

Jung distinguishes meditation as religious/philosophical concentration (Ignatian exercises, certain theosophical practices under Indian influence)—valuable for consolidating consciousness but aimed at shielding consciousness from the unconscious—from meditation that takes spontaneous unconscious products as its object. The latter unites conscious mind with contents that do not arise from a conscious causal chain.

Meditation (or critical introspection) and objective investigation of the object are needed to establish projections: unrecognized projections falsify the object and withhold items that belong to the personality and should be integrated.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common meditation motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
focused introspection; religious vs Jungian use; Ignatian / theosophical concentration; shield vs synthesize; spontaneous unconscious products; recognize projection; integrate projected items; Conjunction essay neighborhood.

3. Academic elucidation

In analytical psychology meditation is focused introspection oriented either to suppress or to meet the unconscious—CW 14. Descent Press keeps Sharp in §4; Samuels: no dedicated head this pass. Prefer CW 14 ¶¶708, 710.

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Meditation. A technique of focused introspection. … These methods [religious/philosophical] are of value only for increasing concentration and consolidating consciousness, but have no significance as regards affecting a synthesis of the personality. … When meditation is concerned with the objective products of the unconscious that reach consciousness spontaneously, it unites the conscious with contents that proceed not from a conscious causal chain but from an essentially unconscious process. … Meditation or critical introspection and objective investigation of the object are needed in order to establish the existence of projections.

(Sharp, 1991) — cites CW 14 ¶¶708, 710 in Sharp’s lemma.

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986) — no dedicated meditation head

(No dedicated Samuels head.) Occasional in-body mentions (e.g., meditation and contemplation)

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

See also: introspection; projection; unconscious; consciousness; individuation.

References

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis. Routledge.

Sharp, D. (1991). Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts. Inner City Books.