A while ago, I observed that there is an agreement between CG Jung, Jacques Lacan, and the Hindus as regards consciousness. Jung and Lacan both hold that consciousness is at base fourfold: Jung expressed this symbolically as Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and Lucifer—the traditional trinity’s core interlinked and then activated with a fourth invisible entity, Lucifer; the idea being that once the excluded “dark element” is brought into the triad one no longer projects darkness onto others.
Jung recapitulated an old alchemical idea, four becomes one: unite the four to release the fifth element, the quintessence—otherwise be ruled by what you reject. Lacan expressed the same idea in a materialist way, without resort to spiritual concepts: the imaginary, the symbolic, the real, and the symptôme. As for the Hindus, they provided a geometric representation through the Sri Yantra—and the Vikings did the same with their Valknut.
Yesterday, I happened to come across this statement in my ancient Routledge guide to Being and Time, purchased secondhand around 2005: “The horizonal structure of the world (the inexhaustible, self-concealing clearing within which Being is manifest as the Being of some entity or other) is grounded in the horizonal structure of temporality (Dasein’s endless standing-outside itself in the three interlinked temporal schemas); temporality is the fundamental condition for the possibility of grasping beings in their Being.” Heidegger’s three interlinked temporal schemas match Jung and Lacan’s ideas, and the interlinked geometry seen in sacred geometry—described mathematically as the Borromean knot. Heidegger’s Dasein (Being) is Lucifer (the symptôme), an energy that traverses inside and outside the Borromean knot in an endlessly playful way—indeed, it likes wordplay and puns; the Holy Grail. To bring all four elements into harmony is to complete consciousness. It seems that if you introspect about consciousness to any degree you will arrive at the schema found in Jung, Lacan, Heidegger, and the Hindus (Vikings)—the three interlinked shapes, with a fourth unseen energy that unites them in a playful way.