Do you believe in a soul?

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I'm starting to dive into Jung right now and as far as I can tell with his claim of the archetypes he seems to be making quite a direct case for the sort of Platonic background to the universe that someone like Sir Roger Penrose might make, just that he's validating the ideas from the clinical psychology and comparative religion direction. If I understand what he's saying correctly its that archetypes even antedate symbols themselves and that common or powerful symbols/mandalas are the result of the archetypes, which are strictly structure and hold no content themselves, being clothed and fitted with concepts and emblems that we can understand. He also makes a clear distinction between archetypes and types, ie. he's not talking about something like a meme where it catches on when people see it for it's internal practical value but rather people will be using and employing archetypes that they've never heard about, read about, etc. and they can arrive at symbol sets independently that have come up before but which that person would have no access to (he gives the example of the schizophrenic who had a Mithraic adept/initiator complex and all of the symbols the man were using weren't available in print until four years after Jung had talked to him).

This is also another reason why I tend to shake my head at people's attempts to either over-extend Occam's razor to shave off things that they personally don't see a need for in the universe (something that empiricism reflexively has to overpower - otherwise there'd be no advancement) or on the other hand people trying to metaphysically explain the universe in verities based on what they can imagine with their capacity for imagination formulated on the basis of what they currently know or believe they know. I think if science has showed us anything repeatedly its that the universe is doing what it's doing and structured the way it is regardless of what we know or don't know at any given point, that and fault or shortage of human imagination will never square a theoretical or philosophic map to the universe simply because the person entertaining the delusions or falsehoods in question had their heart in the right place. If the later were true and 'heart' was what made successes or failures of experiments the scientific method would never have gotten off of the ground. Nature isn't inclined to give out participation trophies and for thousands of years part of the litmus test for human survival was that if your sense of reality mapped on to actuality poorly you'd pay the difference with your life.

I think another thing we constantly have to consider is frame. For example in my daily life I mostly function like a physicalist with some direct/routine nods to the more metaphysical aspects that I like to staple in. Most of us find reductive materialism highly intuitive and almost common sense because it seems to fit the relevant range that we operate in like a glove. It's also part of why, with so many of the most profound and truly odd/unexplainable experiences I have had their effect on my thinking will last a bit but overtime, with the constant wash of daily events I'm almost forced to question the veracity of such experiences not because I've found any facts or new insights into the nature of those experiences that would disqualify them but simply because they don't at all fit the relevant range of what I see and experience on a daily basis. I've had many times as well where I can re-immerse myself in another state, see that it just seems obvious that consciousness is eternal and regardless of whether we're at all human-like after death or whether any trace of imprint from a life is still there that it all goes on but all of that can be snapped away almost as fast by a later set of circumstances, really profound observation of a different rule set, and it can start looking like the dream I might have had the night before where I was getting profound epiphanies about one thing or another but lost it within a minute of waking up.

I think all of these things, especially the frame problem, do a lot of damage to our objectivity. It's also why I'm increasingly trying not to sweat people's emotional knee-jerks to one type of information or another, especially when I said above that I see it enough in myself to understand how and why it happens to people.

One of the more interesting descriptions I've heard of the nirvanic experience is it being called The Great Day 'Be With Us'. It's the day where the sun rises and never sets again (in a grand metaphysical sense). The day when one realizes they're floating on a vast sea in a bubble and they figure out that they can pop that bubble and rejoin the rest of the universe in a sort of timelessness. I believe most of that came from Manly P Hall's Self Unfoldment by Discipline of Realization, if not possibly AP Sinnett.

The walls of that bubble are imaginary to begin with. The lines we draw around ourselves no more divide us from the whole of reality than drawing a line around your neck would separate your head from your body. The sense of separation does not separate anything from anything. The "nirvanic experience" is none other than the direct cognition of ordinary reality, as it is. The metaphor of a sun that never sets is apt, but not because everything is happily ever after (after realization). The Original Light, once seen, reveals itself in/as all things and in all states, not that it was ever hidden. It is not a separate state.

You've achieved paranirvana?

What I remember of it made it sound like it had something to do with our individual sensory sphere popping. Well before that state, again following the narrative, there's a state of being something almost like a deity wandering the solar system.

I would not put it that way. Serious Buddhist practitioners, who find qualified teachers, go on retreats, and follow instructions, tend to get enlightened, more or less. If you sincerely inquire into the matter, you can see for yourself.

Ok, I may have either misread your first response or taken it for implying something that it wasn't. It sounded like you were suggesting that paranirvana and what people call, in the context of life on earth, getting 'enlightened' were the same thing or I might have at least read (perhaps per lack of manual distinction) that you were saying that they were of the same order of magnitude vs two things of the same form at vastly different orders of magnitude. That's what I was trying to draw clarity on.

From the synchretic kabbalistic perspective it's all the light of Kether and often the wall behind Key 7: The Chariot is used to designate the artificial enclosure that creates the field of experience (probably designating Binah at the top of Cheth) and has us experiencing the polarities rather than a consistent experience of the unindividuated light. Either way it's one thing to know it on a philosophic level and another to incorporate that directly into your field of experience where it's fully consequential rather than an article of faith.

What stumps me perhaps a little is that I don't know, encased in human biology as we're used to it, whether the full feat is even possible or whether a person incarnate is limited to a series of glimpses where they can know it for certain but can't necessarily live it on a constant basis.

The punchline is that there never was any conflict between the relative and the absolute, the many and the one, form and emptiness, manifestation and source (pick your flavor). You are already living it. "If you do not see the Way, you do not see it even as you walk on it." From Fukanzazengi, "The way of the Buddha is intrinsically accomplished and perfect." Since reality is already not broken, there is nothing you can do or not do that will fix it. However, you have to try a certain amount before you can fail comprehensively.