(Originally Cont’d Oct. 3, 2009 as Angels Part VII, Angels Appear as Earthly Messengers)

In a few days, my subconscious worked over my dream of Socrates. I can now name the second gentleman as none other than Plato, the Greek teacher who dealt with reality, with the spirit and with life beyond what our senses simply pick up.

I read Plato at one of the lowest points of my life. I got his book about shadows in a cave and I consumed it in my own little cave, a bunker I lived in for several months while in Vietnam. It was no bigger than an 8- by- 8 foot sleeping quarters near the top of a hill on a base camp where I was in charge of a mortar platoon. I had served as an infantry platoon leader in the “bush” for six months, got relieved of my command, not once, but twice by a Lieutenant Colonel I came to loathe. (Out of the three officers in my company, the battalion commander relieved two of us and the third died from wounds caused by the VC (Viet-Cong)). I felt lower than dirt, like a complete failure, and books became my one and only source of solace.

Hence, I got my hands on Plato. Me – – lucky to have been a high school graduate, let alone someone with college smarts- – reading such high-brow stuff as ancient philosophy. But Plato’s words encouraged me to go “back to school,”  to see if I was college material (I hate that term, “college material” – sounds like a piece of cloth a washer-woman would hold up, turn the cloth around, and view with a “jaundiced eye” to determine its true worth while scrubbing and cleaning the family wash.)

I learned from Plato. He spoke to me as an Angel, guiding  me in a  direction where I eventually got an AA degree from Community College and knew a BA and an MA from Temple University were within my grasp! (Got all three degrees in less than 4 full years —  AA, BA and MA!)

Forty years later, Plato appears in my dreams, speaking to Socrates as he did 2,500 years ago, challenging all to rise above our minds, bodies and emotions to seek the Spiritual that can offer many more answers than any book or school of learning.

 * * * * * 

Can a Spirit, Angel or some other Force actually manifest to us through a writing or a book? Yes, it happens everyday. Just look at the many Christians reading their Bible; Jews, their Torah; and Muslims being guided by the Koran. A Spirit can motivate, rejuvenate, and help us to self-create.

When the Spirit appears in a book and  also in a dream, however, it is time to sit up, take notice, and share your message with all.

* * * * * 

PsychoHeresy: CG Jung’s Legacy to the Church#

Jung’s Spirit Guide

Because Jung turned psychoanalysis into a type of religion, he is also considered to be a transpersonal psychologist as well as a psychoanalytical theorist. He delved deeply into the occult, practiced necromancy, and had daily contact with disembodied spirits, which he called archetypes. Much of what he wrote was inspired by such entities. Jung had his own familiar spirit whom he called Philemon. At first he thought Philemon was part of his own psyche, but later on he found that Philemon was more than an expression of his own inner self. Jung says:

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. . . . Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality. I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to me he was what the Indians call a guru^.*

^{(# Internet article on Christianity Googled by same title.)}

  *Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, op. cit., p. 183.

(See Beggining at: Angels Appear as Earthly Messengers)