reconnecting body and soul

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Reconnecting Body and SoulPaulo José Baeta PereiraPublished online: 18 Dec 2013.

To cite this article: Paulo José Baeta Pereira (2004) Reconnecting Body and Soul, The San Francisco JungInstitute Library Journal, 23:2, 6-25

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jung.1.2004.23.2.6

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“The Reunion of the Soul and the Body,” engraving of L. Schiavonetti aftera design of William Blake, in: Robert Blair, The Grave, London, 1808.

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The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 2004, vol. 23, no. 2, 6–25.

Reconnecting Body and Soul

By Paulo José Baeta Pereira

William Blake’s “The Reunion of the Soul and the Body”1

was given to me by a friend as an inspiration for my thesis workat the C. G. Jung Institut-Zürich. She hardly knew (nor did I)that it would turn into the connecting thread of the work. Thetitle of the picture brought back to me a childhood dream. I wasseven years old:

I was sleeping in my bed, one of those children’s beds withbars. The sky was of an intense light blue. There were whiteclouds, densely white and very well defined. One of thoseclouds came down to my bed and took me up into the bluesky. It was the end of the world. It was very beautiful andcomfortable in this cloud. But I got scared. In the processof waking up I asked the cloud to go down and get myfamily, too.

Does this dream mark the beginning of a pilgrimage on thisearth, the strenuous search for the reunion of soul and body? Itwas at the age of seven that I entered school. I did not go tokindergarten. This was not usual in the small town where I lived.My childhood up to this point was spent at home and playingon the streets and in nature. This first clear separation from thatsafe environment, surely charged with the presence of my mother(because my father worked the whole day outside the house)might have played a role in the choice by the unconscious of thoseimages in the dream. Now, four decades later, at a turning pointin my life, this picture appears.

I cannot recollect the first time I saw a work by Blake. WhatI know is that the intensity of movement and dramatic gesturesimpressed me strongly. Later a friend gave me a precious smallbook, printed in 1916, with Blake’s illustrations to “The Bookof Job.” The connection with him did not stop there. Last year,

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8 Paulo José Baeta Pereira

I undertook a weekend trip to London exclusively to see thebiggest Blake retrospective ever shown.

A PENDULUM BETWEEN DANCE AND PSYCHOLOGY

To better understand the underground river of this work,it might help here to give some biographical information. Myadult life path has been marked by an oscillation between Danceand Psychology.

I don’t recall exactly where or when my intrigue with danc-ing began. But I strongly suspect that as a child I discovereddancing not in films or on the stage but within my own body,for movement has always been an intrinsic power in my life.I probably danced before I began to speak.2

Those words, with which Jamake Highwater initiates thePreface of his book, Dance: Rituals of Experience, could very wellhave been mine. As a child I always loved to play “body-games,”both alone and in a group. I could spend hours training a certainskill with a ball, a rope, a bow and arrow, or any other object.My free childhood gave me enough time and space for that. Iwas also fascinated by acting and performing, as well as by musicand rhythm.

But it was only at the age of seventeen, during my highschool studies, that I joined a theater group as an actor. I hadnever thought about learning dance, but because of the actingwork, I also enrolled in classical ballet classes. After high school,I entered the university as expected. I chose to study psychology,but I continued acting and dancing. Only then did I discovercontemporary dance and decide to dedicate myself entirely to it.I had the impression of having found myself. I felt entirely in myelement.

Ten years later, at a turning point of my life, I decided toresume my study of psychology. I intended to study AnalyticalPsychology, which brought me to Zürich. But to do the studiesat the C. G. Jung Institut-Zürich, I had first to obtain my degree,which I did at the University of Zürich. By then, I was rarelyperforming but I continued teaching dance. At the university Imade my first attempt to connect dance and psychology, whichtook expression in my master’s thesis, “On the Psychology ofDance.”

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Reconnecting Body and Soul 9

My next steps took me to India, to live and work in aninternational project called “Auroville.” There the main focus ofmy activities again moved towards dance. Psychology had a place,but in a reduced proportion. I taught dance to children andadults, and I participated in the creation of a dance group, the“Auroville Dance Company,” where I acted both as a dancer andas a choreographer. Many years later, the need grew in me tocomplete my half-finished Jungian Studies. The dance workcouldn’t be stopped anymore: while in Zürich, I also performedand taught dance in Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, andthe USA. The pedagogical work underwent many changes inconnection with my own process, under the influence of myanalytical studies. I am now at a new and more decisive turningpoint in my life, where the connecting point “where soul andbody meet” has become more evident for me in the union of thoseseemingly independent domains.

REFLECTIONS ON DANCE

That moves and That moves not;That is far and the same near;That is within all this and That is also outside all this.Isha Upanishad3

What is it about a great dancer that transforms the body intospirit, that changes ordinary gesture into powerful ritual? Dancechanges biology into a metaphor of the spiritual body in muchthe same way that poetry changes ordinary words into forms thatallow meanings words normally cannot convey.4

Once in a lecture on Comparative Religion at the C. G. JungInstitut-Zürich, Professor Henking5 was talking about the expe-rience of the “numinosum.” He suddenly remembered a danceperformance by Harald Kreutzberg in a central public place inBern. This performance took place in the sixties. Interestingly, awoman attending the lecture had also been present at that per-formance. He said that the whole place was crowded with people.In one of the pieces, Kreutzberg danced “Death.” The dancefinished, a silence blanketed the audience. For a few minutes, hesaid, nobody moved. And he concluded by saying that Kreutzberghad most probably not foreseen such a reaction, which camespontaneously out of the “tuning” experience, which happened

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on many different levels, in him, in the audience, and betweenboth. Here is a first and essential common element in the danceperformance and the analytical situation: the “tuning,” whichcreates or revives “the space in between,” where the processactually happens.

One of the pioneers of modern dance in the beginning ofthe last century was the American Ruth St. Denis. In tune withbreakthroughs in the arts of her time, her approach to dance wasbased on the inner dimensions’ finding expression in life andsociety. “Our dance is the living sculpture of ourselves,”6 shewrote. And further: “To dance is to relate one’s self to the wholeof the Universe.”7 The intrinsic relation between dance and life,man and cosmos, is a kind of common denominator among allthe great dancers and choreographers. Merce Cunningham,dancer, choreographer, and exponent of the dance and life rela-tionship, left clear imprints in the development of contemporarydance that he formulated in a very concrete and lively way:

For me, it seems enough that dancing is a spiritual exercisein physical form, and that what is seen, is what it is. AndI do not believe it is possible to be “too simple.” What thedancer does is the most realistic of all possible things, andto pretend that a man standing on a hill could be doingeverything except just standing is simply divorce—divorcefrom life, from the sun coming up and going down, fromclouds in front of the sun, from the rain that comes fromthe clouds and sends you into the drugstore for a cup ofcoffee, from each thing that succeeds each thing. Dancingis a visible action of life.8

It is surely difficult to come to a concise definition of dance,especially in a time where diversity is the key word. Dance fulfills,now more than ever, many different functions in our lives. Itsmeaning varies according to the cultural context in which it lives.The flag carrier (porta-bandeira) from a samba school from the“Morro do Salgueiro” in Rio de Janeiro looks very different froma turning Dervish from Turkey, though they might turn in a verysimilar way when they dance. A bharat nathyam dancer from Indiabases his dance on different principles than a western, classicalballet dancer, in spite of the fact that both dance forms in theirown contexts are classified as “classical dance.” The break-dancein Philadelphia has very little in common with the Japanese butoh

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dance, though both are contemporary expressions in their respec-tive cultures. Furthermore, dance has many uses and differentmeanings in our social life today.

In the above-mentioned examples, we see dance as a formof art, a form of ritual or connection with the sacred, and alsosimply as an activity born out of an instinctual need to move toan inborn rhythmic sense. In the Latin countries, for example,dance is very much part of people’s lives. Dance is a way of beingtogether. It is very common there for social gatherings to end indancing.

To comment consistently on the place and role of dance inthe world today would be a very big work in itself, which goesmuch beyond my perspective here. I simply want to call thereader’s attention to the diversity of its forms and expressions.One aspect, though, remains an open question for me. What hashappened to the sacred value of dance? This is hard to find todayas an intrinsic part of life. Is it that we have lost connection withthe sacred? Or are we unconsciously looking for another, moreintegral and convincing way of experiencing it? The breakthroughmovement of Monte Verita at the beginning of the twentiethcentury in Switzerland stressed the integration of dance andnature, and the natural approach to the body. What would stillbe a motif of attention, and maybe opposition, today took placealmost a century ago. And it was important that the beginnersof European Modern Dance—the dancers, choreographers andmovement experts who marked the development of the dance inthe last century—Rudolf von Laban, Mary Wigman, SusannePerrottet, Kurt Jooss, Rosalia Chladek, Harald Kreutzberg—wereall part of it. Where has this gone? What happened to this fantasticlevel of energy and breakthrough? Where before were people andlife, today we have a historical museum of that period. We do findtoday a few pale attempts to reconnect with the sacred value ofdance. Some churches are integrating dance in their rites, and“Circle Dances” are well known in New Age centers. Ritualdances, like the Candonblé in Brazil, that have strong inner impactare the most related in their form to ancient traditional rites. Butall these expressions touch the interest of rather small circles, anddo not engage the community at large.

Nevertheless, there seems to be a global movement—in myopinion of a rather unconscious and collective nature—toward

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rediscovering the sacred in the profane. I see this as a collectiveexpression of a search for the “reunion of soul and body.” Thefunction and meaning of the body in our lives today points inthis direction.

LIFE AND MOVEMENT

We find in Indian mythology that the universe originated inrhythm of the dancing feet of Shiva. This idea is easily acceptableif we look at the close connection between life and movement.The basic proof is that all living things move. Movement is oneof the essential qualities of life. The most obvious evidence of thisis that the sign of death is a complete cessation of bodily functions,manifested and characterized by the withdrawing of movement.The world in which we live, life itself, and what we are—any inneror outer aspect of it—is the continuously evolving expressionthrough dance of the inner world of a god. If behind any creativeprocess there is an originating image, what might have movedShiva to dance?

The Isha Upanishad, one of the sacred books that constitutethe basis of Indian culture, also evokes the image of movementat the very origin of creation:

One unmoving that is swifter than Mind,That the Gods reach not, for it progresses ever in front.That, standing, passes beyond others as they run.In That the Master of Life establishes the Waters.9

One of the words for water in Sanskrit is apah. Accordingto the Vedas, one of the meanings of apah is “that, which alwaysmoves, even if it looks still.” It is interesting to note that one ofthe main symbolisms of water is “life” or “life energy.” It hasbecome common knowledge today that an atom is nothing morethan particles of energy in constantly interacting movement. Con-sequently anything that we see exists in movement and throughmovement. The whole universe seems to be a constant interactionof bodies in movement. Looking this way, one sees that we arevery close to the Indian myth of creation.

Accordingly, each of our movements is necessarily in directconnection with all that lives. If we observe well, we will find inany of the movements we make a clear parallel with some law of

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nature. Let us take as an example the movement of opening:opening our hand to catch or hold or receive something, oropening our eyes when we wake up, or opening our mouths whenwe yawn. By doing that we are simply connecting ourselves withevery movement of opening in nature or in life.

One of the subjects in my studies of contemporary dance was“Form.” In one of those classes we were exploring movements

Shiva Nataraja. Photograph: Dyane Sherwood.

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of opening and closing, based on open and closed forms. Thenthe teacher said:

Just imagine that while you do your movement of openingor of closing, you are connecting yourself instinctively witheverything that in this moment in the whole universe isopening or closing. And this goes from the most physical tothe most subtle dimension of it.

A door opened widely for me at that moment. I understoodanother dimension of movement.

My personal movement was suddenly charged with an im-personal, archetypal quality. Evidently, just to think of this allowsa bigger insight into the movement and brings necessarily morequality to it. But as for its unconscious dimension, as Jung madeclear, it is not enough to grasp it intellectually. It has also to be“understood according to its feeling-value.”10 Here is wheredance offers a chance for this experience. Because in dance wehave the “movement for the movement’s sake.”11 Lisa Ullmann,who developed a wonderful pedagogical approach with childrenin creative dance, writes:

One finds movement in each human activity. Why do webelieve then that exactly dance can contribute something tothe preparation for life—which is the proposition of eacheducational process? In dance we immerse ourselves in theprocess of the movement action by itself, while in otheractivities, e.g. in sport or at work, our concentration isdirected at the practical result of our action.12

And she completes this insight: “One of the objectives of dancein education, and, in my opinion, the most important one, is tohelp the human being to find a bodily relationship to the wholeof existence.”13 Here is where I see the big potential of dance asa way of self-exploration and self-development—and last but notleast, an appropriate tool in the process of individuation.

One of the elements which contributes to the experience ofthe feeling value in any process is the image produced by theunconscious, because it carries in itself an energetic potential. Indance, by the fact that we are giving ourselves to the “movementfor the movement’s sake,” the feeling connection with thoseimages is a natural consequence of the process.

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Paulo J. Baeta Pereira at the International Conference, “Re-creating the World:The Transformative Power of Arts and Play in Psychotherapy,” September2003, Evksinograd, Bulgaria. Photograph: ©Frederik Beeftink, 2003.

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IMAGE AND DANCE

If behind any creative process there is an originating image,what might have moved Shiva to dance? Each body is a form ofsoul. How does “the face,” actually hidden behind the mirror ofmy own soul, manifest and transform itself constantly in each faceone sees on the streets? “... easy is the descent to Avernus: nightand day the door of gloomy Dis stands open; but to recall thysteps and pass out to the upper air, this is the task, this the toil!”14

There is a movement of ascent and a movement of descentin Blake’s “Re-union of Soul and Body.” There is a central pointof connection, the mouth—a window—a threshold betweeninside and outside. We inhale and we blow. It inhales and it blows.It is inhaled and it is blown. The breath flows continuously inand out, reassuring life’s flow. The food that is taken insidetransforms itself coming out as words. Where does this transfor-mation take place? Where is it that the soul and the body are one?

There is a moving point inside which carries us from instantto instant. So aham in Sanskrit can be translated as “I am That.”That which is forever and in everything. “The self is not only thecentre, but also the whole circumference . . . ”15 writes Jung.

That moves and That moves not;That is far and the same is near;That is within all this andThat also is outside all this.Isha Upanishad16

Knowing or not, wanting or resisting, one is constantly movedby it. Its magnetic attraction does not allow anything in creationto stand still.

Akash in Sanskrit means at the same time “ether,” the firstof the five elements17, and “space,” which contains the wholeuniverse. Interestingly, in our Western approach, the elementswere reduced to four. Ether, as a substance, is too subtle to fitinto our Cartesian system. It is the first element, the emptiness,which cannot be touched, felt, or sensed. It can only be expe-rienced. Like space, it is the potential container of anything andeverything. Bringing both together, we have “empty space,”which is the basis for any creation or creative process.

In Ayurvedic medicine, which is rooted in the ancientVedas,18 each of the five elements is connected to one of the five

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senses. Akash is related to hearing and consequently to sound.One finds in many cultures the myth of creation presenting soundor the word as the origin of everything. The Gospel Accordingto St. John starts by identifying Christ as the Word, which is thecreative force of everything:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God;all things were made through him, and without him was notanything made that was made.19

In India, another myth of creation says that everything origi-nated from the primordial sound AUM (or OM). Is it this originalpower of sound that makes music such a powerful medium ofmoving human beings? Is music the language of the soul parexcellence?

My work with music in dance, and especially in danceimprovisation, is based on the assumption that this is true.Opening our bodies and ourselves completely to sound means,in its essence, to connect with that empty space inside us. What-ever manifests in this space is an image, or contains in itself animage, or reveals an image. When we move to a sound—be itaudible or only perceived within or intuited—our movements arenecessarily the reflection, the expression, the result, the incorpo-ration, or the personification of an image. We might not perceiveit, but it is surely there. The more one develops the capacity ofimmersing oneself integrally in the sound and of giving ourselvesto the movement, the more evident this will become; the clearerthe contact with the image will be. A piece of our soul is thenrevealed in the body. It is a moment of reconnection betweenbody and soul.

I want to clarify two things here. One is that I perceivemovement and sound as one. I have worked with musicians whothink the same way. Each sound is movement as each movementis sound. Therefore, when I talk about sound here, I do not meannecessarily a played piece. I am talking about the music whichplays continuously inside us, in things, and in the universe.

The other clarification is the definition of image. Usuallyimage refers to its visual character. In this case, I am using imageas the “Urform” (original form), as Jawlenski might have seen it,20

or as the “Urbilder” (original images), as Jung calls the arche-

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types. This means the energetic potential of the unconscious,which expresses itself frequently in the form of a picture. Thepicture is a representation of the image. But the image can imprintitself as a body sensation, as a feeling or emotion, as a gesture.A bird just landed on my windowsill, moved his head from sideto side and took off again. In the fraction of a second in whichit caught my eye, a process took place inside me. Images havebeen activated: memories, yearnings, wishes, and surely a corre-spondent body feeling as well. The inner and physical state I amin at this moment plays a decisive role in the process of activationof images. It is a process that one cannot store, or at least notcompletely. This is, according to Jung, the intrinsic quality of theunconscious. But one can develop the sensitivity to connect withthis level, as in dealing with dreams.

Working on dreams does not provide us with the faculty ofdeciding which dreams we want to dream. But it develops oursensibility to connect with them, with their language, with theirinner message, with their connection to our present life. In danceimprovisation, one develops sensitivity for the connection withthe body and the flow of its movements. The intent is to tuneoneself to the exact moment of the happening, to precisely theplace we are inside ourselves and in the body. This allows anexperience of the flow inside.

Here again there is a parallel to the dream situation. In thedream one experiences a flow of images. There is a visual reg-istration and decoding. In the movement these are synesthetic andcan manifest in different ways, as already mentioned above. Thisstimulation can also provoke a visual image, and usually it does,though this is not necessarily so. But it is my not–yet–researchedtheory that a visual track runs continuously, parallel with and inconnection to the movements of our bodies, which, due to theconscious selectivity of our psyche, cannot be perceived all thetime. I see a correspondence in Joan Chodorow’s followingformulation: “Whether we are children or adults and whether weare conscious of it or not, imaginative activity goes on all thetime.”21

THE BODY AND INDIVIDUATION

There is only one temple in the worldand that is the human body.

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Nothing is more sacred than that noble form.—Novalis

The story in the Aitareya Upanishad tells us,

Once the gods wished to come down and inhabit an earthlyframe. Several animal forms (the cow, the horse) were pre-sented to them one after another, but they were not satisfied:none was considered adequate for their inhabitation. At lastthe human frame (with its conscious personality) was offeredto them and immediately they declared that that was indeedthe perfect form they needed ... and they entered into it.22

In the dance, the body is the instrument. All happens withinit and through it. The body expresses the experience; it formsexperience. Through the body what happens becomes visible andcan also be refined and made transparent.

Nolini Kanta Gupta, the author of the text above, adds: “Thehuman frame is the abode of the gods ... But the most significantthing about it is that the gods alone do not dwell there: all beings,all creatures crowd there, even the ungodly and the undivine.23

He gives here an image of the cosmic dimension of the body, ofthe complexity which is condensed in it. Once a participant inone of my intensive courses in dance improvisation made a com-ment about his experience with the work, which relates closelyto this dense quality of the body. He said:

What impressed me in the whole course was the body itself,the fact that it is something that one can’t hide. We dressourselves, but we can’t hide ourselves. It is not possible toconceal ourselves in the body and consequently also to hidefrom the others.

That experience of feeling exposed is a very important onein the process of becoming conscious. This quality of the bodyto give expression to what we are means an open door simulta-neously to the inside and to the outside. It is exactly this expe-rience of being exposed that connects us with the godly and theungodly aspects, the light and the shadow sides that co-exist inus. This is a common experience, and an indispensable one thathappens when one starts working creatively with the body; it isthe same experience one has upon entering the analytic process.Lama Anagarika Govinda said it with a beautiful and powerful

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image: “The body is, so to say, the stage between heaven andearth, on which the psycho-cosmic drama is enacted. For theknowing one, the initiate, it is the sacred stage of an unfathomablydeep mystery play.”24

We do not need to search very far. It is enough to think,for example, of the expression of emotions and feelings through-out daily life. A broad spectrum of them is always present andconstantly active in each one of us. We are constantly moved byinner and outer images, people, events, objects, and so on. Mostof the time we are not aware of our reactions to this stimulation,but they always find a channel of expression, most frequentlythrough body language. A gesture or a mimicking, the tensionor relaxation of the whole body or specific parts of it, a smile,a twinkle of the eye, a change in the quality of the breathing areamong the common reactions that we find. The most extremereactions are probably to be found in psychosomatic processes.I was surprised to find Jung’s clear formulation, while observinghis body reactions, in connection to the work on his Memories,Dreams, Reflections. He is quoted by Aniela Jaffe in the Intro-duction to the book:

It has become a necessity for me to write down my earlymemories. If I neglect to do so for a single day, unpleasantphysical symptoms immediately follow. As soon as I set towork they vanish and my head feels perfectly clear.25

Emotions and feelings are constantly perceived in and reg-istered by the body, and through it they are conveyed and com-municated to others. But this is only one dimension. Any otherdomain of the psyche will also constantly leave its imprints on thebody and find expression through it. Therefore it seems quitecorrect to say, with Anagarika Govinda, that the body is the placewhere the psycho-cosmic drama is played.

These reflections make us also consider how difficult it is toestablish a clear separation between body and soul. The humanpsyche is a unified totality, which includes the body. One can evensay that we are body, and not only that we live in or with it.

In archaic cultures, the body and the cosmos were not seenas independent from each other. Here both the influence of thecosmos upon man and the influence of man upon the cosmoswere an unquestionable reality. Looking at this moment in the

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development of consciousness, Jolande Jacobi delineates twodifferent stages:

First, as a primitive being, man lived—as a child does stilltoday—in a complete non-differentiation from his surround-ing world. As a part of the animated nature he experiencedhimself only through his active handling. He possessed yetno knowledge about the distinction and singularity of thehuman soul. It was a paradisiac state. Later, as he lost theparadise and detached himself from the domination of thesoul of nature, while his world—including heaven andstars—expanded into a cosmos, then the image that he hadfrom himself shrank as if into an atom, where the whole lifeoutside him, this powerful heavenly abode, was pressed asa seal in a soft wax. He awoke to the awareness of himselfas an intersection of cosmic forces, which imprinted in hima valid and precise stamp. He experienced himself as a tinyreflection of the universe and the universe as an amplifiedreproduction of himself.26

An expression of this passage is found in the dance of thosecultures. Their dances marked or accompanied the most relevantevents of life, such as birth and death, marriage, planting andharvest, hunt and war, as a means of interaction between the twodimensions, the human and the cosmic.

With the awakening and establishment of the rational mind,this sense of union was categorically changed, and, one could say,almost completely broken. The more man’s habits distanced fromthe laws and cycles of nature, the more the body became a kindof slave of the mind. One could say that in the consciousness ofmodern man, he does not live any more in the body, but witha body. At the same time that we know incredibly much aboutthe structure and functioning of the body, we are distanced moreand more from its instinctual functioning.

Another relevant aspect in ancient cultures was the embed-ding of the individual in the collective, which influenced hisrelation to the body. The individualism of today brings with itanother stressing factor in the alienation from the body. Thecomplexity of modern life seems to have distanced us even morefrom the body as a given reality and an indispensable, character-istic, and inseparable part of ourselves. The blind belief in Westernmedicine—as a replacement for the priest or shaman in ancientcultures—generates an almost complete lack of consideration of

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the body’s self-healing qualities, attributing to it almost exclu-sively the image of a potential disease-bearer. Charles H. Taylor,in his Preface to The Body: An Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbol-ism, presents us with a clear formulation of this moment:

In contemporary Western culture, the human body is thefocus of much fascinated attention, even obsessive preoccu-pation. This fascination is especially manifest in the visualimages of twentieth-century art, advertising, and photogra-phy, ranging from alluring idealizations to hard-core por-nography. We apply enormous resources of modern technol-ogy, public health, and medical science to postpone or repairbodily illness, old age, and degeneration. A major goal oflifestyle changes and surgical interventions is to prolong theexperience or illusion of youth. Yet confronting our obses-sion with the body is the inescapable fact that in this life ourconsciousness resides in a physical form that must finallyreturn to dust.27

Is that all? Is the body just subject to this fatalistic reality,or is there something else waiting to be discovered? Is there achance of transformation as long as we inhabit this human frame?We read and hear about saints in the East and in the West whohad their bodies directly affected by their inner process. Historytells us of the smell of flowers coming out of a saint’s wounds;others like Nicolaus von Flüe in Switzerland lived for many yearswithout eating; a saint in South India entered a room and dis-solved into light. What happened there? The somatic effect thatJung felt while confronted with the inner urge of writing downhis memories is an experience that is much closer to our commonreality. But in my opinion it points in the same direction. Thequest in us cannot be stopped. More than ever, the shadow ofdeath seems to be lurking behind the folds of time. We avoid theconfrontation; we daily avoid putting to ourselves the real ques-tion which scratches us within, because it is simply too big forour present consciousness. But this does not mean that it doesnot exist. Modern Science is a reflection of the question. Wescrutinize the cell and the atom down to the most minimalparticles possible with the technical means at our disposal atpresent. What are we searching for? A spark of the spirit in matter,the point of union of body and soul? At the same time, we reachas far as possible into the open universe. What will happen, when

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that nearest to us—in the cells of our bodies—and that furthest—which lies far beyond the stars—one day are found to be one andthe same thing? What is the meaning of the body in this process?Will it undergo changes and continue existing as such?

If we are formed in this matter, it is because this matter hasits own plenitude and its own accomplishment—where is theseed that ends up in a non-tree? This seed of matter, sym-bolized by this body, has to have its sense and its key.28

Sri Aurobindo, the gigantic Indian thinker of the last century, putsit in poetic form:

But many-visaged is the cosmic Soul;A touch can alter the fixed front of Fate.A sudden turn can come, a road appear.A greater Mind may see a greater Truth,Or we may find when all the rest has failedHid in ourselves the key of perfect change.Ascending from the soil where creep our days,Earth’s consciousness may marry the Sun,Our mortal life ride on the spirit’s wings,Our finite thoughts commune with the Infinite.29

In the Editorial Note to The Body: An Encyclopedia of Ar-chetypal Symbolism, Annmari Ronnberg reintroduces this theme,adding more nuances to it, relating the body to nature, stressingthe deeper meaning of the presently growing ecological aware-ness:

Many voices are calling our attention to nature and the body.Behind the harsh language of addictions, illnesses, or earthpollution we may discover new instructions for how to live.Without the wisdom of nature our culture cannot survive.We are being challenged to see the natural body no longerseparated from soul or spirit, just as modern science hasbegun to discover that an image in our mind can affect thebody and bring about our healing.30

And she proceeds, quoting Blake:

Maybe the voice of the Devil in William Blake’s “Marriageof Heaven and Hell” knows a new truth—or one as old asthe goddess—about the body when he says: “Man has no

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Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portionof Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soulin this age.”31

I want to conclude with a few more poetic lines by SriAurobindo, with the hope that those words will touch this flamein each of us.

O Force-compelled, Fate-driven earth-born race,O petty adventurers in an infinite worldAnd prisoners of a dwarf humanity,How long will you tread the circling tracks of mindAround your little self and petty things?But not for a changeless littleness were you meant,Not for vain repetition were you built;Out of the Immortal’s substance you were made;Your actions can be swift revealing steps,Your life a changeful mold for growing gods.A Seer, a strong Creator, is within,The immaculate Grandeur broods upon your days,Almighty powers are shut in Nature’s cells.32

ENDNOTES1 William Blake, “The Reunion of the Soul and the Body.”2 Jamake Highwater, Dance: Rituals of Experience (3rd ed.), Pennington,

NJ, Princeton Book Company Publishers, 1992, 9.3 Isha Upanishad (7th ed.) (Trans. Sri Aurobindo, Ed. Saashram), Twin

Lakes, WI, Lotus Press, 1998, 16.4 Highwater, 218.5 He was then the Director of the Folk Art Museum of Zurich.6 Ruth St. Denis, Wisdom Comes Dancing (Ed. Kamae A. Miller), Seattle,

Peace Works, 1997, 20.7 St. Denis, 27.8 Merce Cunningham, quoted in: David Vaughan, Merce Cunningham,

Fifty Years, New York, Aperture, 1997, 67.9 Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishads (7th ed.), Pondicherry, India, Sri

Aurobindo Ashram, 1986, 2.10 CW 9-ii, ¶58.11 Max Terpis, Tanz und Tanzer, Zürich, Atlantis, 1946, 14.12 Lisa Ullmann, quoted in R. von Laban, Der Moderne Ausdruckstanz,

Wilhelmshaven, Florian Noetzel Verlag, 1988, 125.13 Ullman, 125.14 The Aeneid VI, 126–129, quoted on the title page of “Individual

Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy,” CW 12.15 CW 12, ¶44.16 Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishads 5, 2.17 The others are: wind (Vayu), fire (Agni), water (Apah) and earth

(Pritvi).18 The oldest of the Indian sacred texts, a source and basis of the whole

Indian culture.19 New Testament, John, 1–3.20 Angelika Affentranger-Kirchrath, Jawlensky in der Schweiz 1914–1921

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(Trans. from the German by Paulo Pereira), Katalog der Ausstellung, KunsthausZürich, Bern, Benteli Verlag, 2000, 187.

21Joan Chodorow, Foreword, in Joan Chodorow, ed., C. G. Jung, Jungon Active Imagination, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1997, 6.

22 Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Collected Works Vol.3, Pondicherry, India, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, 1972,80.

23 Gupta, 80.24 Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, New York, Samuel Weiser, 1960/

1970, 150.25 New York, Pantheon Books, 1963, vi.26 Jolande Jacobi, Vom Bilderreich der Seele (Trans. from the German by

Paulo Pereira), Zürich, Walter Verlag, 1992, 11.27 Boston and London, Shambala, 1996, vii.28 Satprem, Mère ou la Mutation de la Mort, Madras, Macmillan India

Press, 1976, 6.29 Sri Aurobindo, “Savitri,” Collected Works, Vol. 28, Pondicherry, Sri

Aurobindo Ashram, 1972, 256.30 Ronnberg, xvi.31 Ronnberg, xvi.32 Sri Aurobindo, “Savitri,” 370.

ABSTRACT. Paulo José Baeta Pereira, “Reconnecting Body andSoul,” The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal 23, 6–25.Are body and soul one in two different aspects? Where in thewholeness of our being do they meet? What role does the bodyplay today in one’s life quest? There is a stream of images under-lining the flow of life. Life is movement. Our bodies move by thoseimages. Therefore a creative work with dance can be a rich fieldof exploration of this movement-imagery field and offers an excel-lent tool towards the process of individuation. To reflect on all that,using amplifications and considering synchronicities, is the pro-posal of this work.

KEY WORDS: body, breath, dance, image, individuation, move-ment, soul.

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reconnecting body and soul

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