Learning to look beyond projections
“Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens”
Karl Jung
It was a breezy November afternoon as I was rushing to the train station, making my way towards southmost part of Shinjuku, Tokyo, to meet Y., who had reserved us a couple of seats on the right wing for the biggest projection mapping show in the world. After being postponed due to a typhon in October, it was rescheduled for November 12th. We had a pleasure to view the projection show consisting from 19th finalist coming from all over the world. The projections were dancing all over a castle like structure, creating a surreal environment that immediately made me feel like I had landed in a scene of Blade Runner (1982) or in a rather Murakamiesque universe. I had to look into Y.-s pretty face, to assure myself that there is something real in there besides me and that I wasn’t traveling alone through this new and strange space-time.
As the show was coming through its end, the speaker said something that would stay with me. She quoted Karl Jung, “Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens”. Now, admitting, it has been a good bit since I read something from Karl Jung (Man and his symbols, being the latest I had read), but Jung’s name alone demands my instantaneous full attention. The complex elements of the computational simulations, reflecting on the walls of the magically alive castle, with geometrical shapes moving in all directions harmonically, combing with Jung’s invitation to look inside, made me determined to look at the world around myself.
Below, I want to share the message of one of the invited guest artist group, Ad Astra:
We are all created from the same source to live and learn from our surroundings, but sometimes we have a dream, and it takes courage to be different and go against what everybody else is doing. We must have a clear mindset on what we want to achieve and commit to it—going through every obstacle and problem. Before going further, sometimes the biggest enemy is ourselves, faced it. We must know where we are, and we belong, and accept who we are. From here and on, be prepared to launch and shine to the stars, reminisce about our hardships, and be proud of every obstacle that we’ve been through as everybody watching us shine closer to our dream. Blasting to every universe and version of ourselves. And in the end, we are going to the next dream. Because, after all, we are the stars of our own life.
I want to conclude this little article by a short analysis of Jung quote itself, which in a more complete form reads like, “I realize that under the circumstances you have described you feel the need to see clearly. But your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.”. The quote is from a 1916 letter to Fanny Bowditch, a patient of Jung. Throughout the letter, Jung was encouraging Fanny to focus inside her own mind and spirituality and to stop projecting her admiration upon Jung. This is a basic principle of psychoanalysis, an invitation to come back to oneself, through a solitary journey to the depth of one’s own psyche. The outside world is a mere projection of this inside consciousness and we should seek to come to harmony with ourselves before attempting to conquer the world.
The quote itself provides infinitely space for (mis)interpretation and that speaks to the depth of Jung’s works. I hope to address some of these in future articles, particularly on the interpretation of dreams.
After the show we ended up grabbing a delicious dinner in a nearby Denny’s and walked our way back to the station, surrounded by many people who with an artistic halo that reminded me of the complex and rich social structure of Tokyo circles.
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