Catching the Thread: Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology

I found myself either underlining or highlight sentence after sentence, even whole paragraphs. Author’s work, in my opinion, is masterful.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee has crafted a masterful book that blends Jungian and Sufi dream interpretation. The end result in a product rich in description and interpretation. This fluently written exposition was a joy to read, and I will be reading other works by Vaughan-Lee.

Another book on the great Nothingness and Oneness/God and Monism-and our realization of this and merging with it. The different methods this book used to capture the essence of Spirit were brilliant. Those would be: Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology. He writes about those archetypal characters that are within your own self, and the dark shadows that you have by which casted a veil between you and the Beloved. That is what is also key to this work, it describes the true Love that is God and that I know is the essence of our full existence and the Ultimate Reality. It is the ocean that is God, and any love that we experience in this life is a glimpse of the ocean of love which is Oneness. And any beauty here on Earth is a reflection of the infinite ocean of beauty that is Oneness. Our goal is to reach that by transforming our inner shadows. Now you might wonder how that archetypal plane is related to reaching Oneness, and that is through the other side of this book: dreamwork. Usually in describing monism and reaching God through the higher levels of reality, dreams are thought of as lower levels than what we experience now. But this author interprets them in light of our Self, which is One with realization of God. I must say that while reading this I felt more deeply suspended into that mystic Oneness.

Seeking more knowledge of Sufism was my main reason for reading Catching the Thread. The description of Sufism was too scattered over the chapters for me to put the pieces together in a satisfying way. Just one chapter summarizing the basics would have made the difference. The amount of dream material was excessive. Why not just a few extensive case examples. It is impossible for me to judge the quality of the dream interpretation, given the limited information on the dreamers. Most of the applications of Jungian concepts seemed appropriate to me. For those unfamiliar with Jungian psychology, this book serves as a useful introduction.

The author uses many threads (Jung, Blake, Edinger, Jacobi, Mother Teresa, Esther Harding, Rumi, St. John of the Cross, etc.) to weave a simple, refreshing, mystical work. The Sufi exposure is a welcome addition for the Western reader in the journey along the alchemical path. The way of unity for seekers presents a challenge to those consciously pursuing the spiritual life.

Super fast delivery and book as described.

Good

I was expecting something a bit more in depth.