Our modern age of nihilism, or meaninglessness, reaches its end when the bearer of meaning, Being, gradually concealed from view over the passage of centuries, is now completely forgotten. Objects are now understood only in terms of their efficiency and ordered-ness, or as mere enhancements to our lives, but never as "portals" to the infinite depths of Being. Three friends confront this 'catastrophe' and each undergoes a moment of inception in which a new configuration of the world becomes possible. Two of them attempt to bring this new configuration into actuality via an art form, while the third refuses and instead participates in the inevitable culmination of our technological civilisation. [my essay, The Hidden Legacy of The Red Book, was first published in: Thomas Arzt (Hrsg.): Das Rote Buch. C. G. Jungs Reise zum "anderen Pol der Welt" Studien zur Analytischen Psychologie, Bd. 5, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, Germany, 2015.]
About the Author: John C. Woodcock holds a doctorate in Consciousness Studies (1999). His thesis concerns the theme of "the end of the world", based on his own personal experiences lasting twenty years. At first it seemed to John that he was undergoing a purely personal psychological crisis but over time he discovered that he was also participating in the historical process of a transformation of the soul, as reflected in the enormous, even apocalyptic, changes occurring in our culture. During this difficult period of John's life, he wrote two books: Living in Uncertainty Living with Spirit and Making of a Man. John's next three books, Transformation of the World, The Imperative, and Hearing Voices, explore the meaning of "the end of the world" more fully. John's following books, including Animal Soul and Manifesting Possible Futures, establish a firm theoretical ground for the claim that the soul is urging us towards the development of new inner capacities that can help us face the uncertainty of modern life and, as well, address the unknown future. His book, Overcoming Solidity, continues this exploration in terms of our current structure of consciousness and its correlative world of empirical reality. His book, Making New Worlds, begins the work of articulating the art form that is emerging in response the soul's intention to incarnate in the real world. He develops this theme more fully in his book, The Coming Guest and the New Art Form. He has also written an unusual book, UR-image, which tells a story of four friends whose lives are interrupted by an intrusion of four possible futures. John currently lives with his wife Anita in Sydney, where he teaches, writes, and consults with others concerning their own journey through the present "apocalypse of the interior", as it has been called, in his capacity as a practicing Jungian psychotherapist. John and Anita also work with couples in a therapeutic setting.