The most mysterious thing in the universe is ourselves. We think we know ourselves but actually we do not know. According to the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, our shadow is all of the parts of ourselves—our demons—that we despise or loathe and therefore hide and avoid. Much like a shadow, it is this dark image that follows us around, always behind us, always attached to us. It is impossible to run away or lose our shadow because ultimately, our shadow is a deeper representation of ourselves.
The shadow is the animal side of our personality. Although it is said to be the source of both our creative and destructive energies, it refers overwhelmingly to the negative brain circuits or the negative emotions in us in terms of fear, anger, guilt, lust, laziness, aggression, insecurity, jealousy, envy, limitless desires, self-doubt, worthlessness, lack of trust, cheating, etc. Jung “saw that denying our shadows and everything they contained…was a source of a great deal of human suffering, and even argued that violence and full-on wars within and between societies were often the sad result of denying our collective shadow.”
Jung had argued that unless we embrace the demons in us, the dark parts of ourselves—our worst impulses, our worst shame, our worst fears—and unless we make peace with them through an “inner directed spirituality”, we cannot achieve a kind of balance, a “wholeness”, a psychic health that endows us with a sense of meaning that religion and science have failed to give us.
Most of us do our best to disassociate ourselves from our demonic shadows. We do not befriend them. Nor do we accept them. We escape from them through some addiction even as we feel guilty and hate ourselves for all of the damage and destruction that addiction causes. We get high or drunk to forget our demons. We distract ourselves from our demons with work or competition. And “we treat others like shit to distort our deep-seated fear that they will eventually treat us like shit”! The more we do this, the more powerful our shadows become to torment us all the more.
In this connection, the BTS seem to be the most faithful followers of Jung’s analytical psychology and psychiatry in comparison with the Beatles. They also have a better healthy, wholesome impact on their followers as compared to the Beatles.
Music connoisseurs know that the BTS—the fab seven boys—are now the blessed leaders of rebellious and troubled youth all over the world as were the Beatles—the fab four boys—in the 1960s. The BTS are undoubtedly the most terrific band now as the Beatles were in the mid-1960s.
Some have even hailed the Beatles as the greatest rock musicians of all time who had covered the entire gamut of every feeling. Be that as it may, as Rolling Stone India has pointed out, the South Korean BTS is by now well-known for, inter alia, meaningful lyricism, uplifting messages (to deal with the internal demons), exhilarating calisthenics and self-love through Hip-Hop, Pop, Rhythm & Blues and Rock expressions in order to bring about positive psychological change in the world. They have a voice for those in the midst of things falling apart and for those who need it the most. Their fandom is known as the Army with which they have an organic and loving and caring linkage. Their Map of the Soul: Persona (2019) and Map of the Soul:7 (2020) albums are loaded with Carl Jung’s psyche theories and understanding that the purpose of psychic energy is to motivate the individual in a number of important ways, including spiritually, intellectually, and creatively apart from acting as a motivational source for seeking happiness and conflict-resolution.
The Beatles were the most famous people in the world in the 1960s and their seminal album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had Carl Jung’s appearance on its cover. It had also reflected Jung’s predilection for Eastern Mysticism as a solution for the problems of alienating modern life in general and for overcoming personal demons in particular. But note that the Beatles could not produce any music independent of pot and acid consumption. They were notorious for going overboard on LSD trips, good and bad. All the same, their inebriated fans celebrated them as the most inventive exponents of the genre of psychedelic rock and Sgt. Pepper’s was the signature album of that rock. Carl Jung had never endorsed the use of addictive narcotics and drugs. He had also not even supported the use of habit forming drugs for medical purpose. However, the Beatles were deeply embedded in the drug culture of the mid-60s and they could not completely get out of this culture despite getting attracted to the ancient wisdom of India and Indian music and culture via their attraction to the musical instrument Sitar and the classical musician Pandit Ravi Shankar and to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation.
Even when they were at the Maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh in order to escape their identity as super pot and acid rockstars, the Beatles did not stop smoking and drinking and other externally directed “fucking around” ways. They cared two hoots for Ravi Shankar’s and Maharishi’s opposition to narcotics and drugs and alcohol. They only half-heartedly hoped to sort out their shadows or inner dilemmas through some “magic mantra” even as they fought among themselves as if possessed by inner demons. They finally walked out of Maharishi’s Rishikesh ashram rather unceremoniously and hysterically on the pretext of Maharishi’s alleged sexual misdemeanours and black magic spells on them. Despite their utter failure to free themselves from the inner demons tormenting them and therefore their constant lack of focus, their genius somehow pumped up to impress their fans with great lyrics and innovative tunes.
To conclude, unlike the Beatles and their fandom, the BTS and their Army qualify as better listeners and practitioners of Carl Gustav Jung’s psyche analysis based on the persona (or mask)—the outward face we present to the world which conceals our real self; the anima/animus (the mirror image of our biological sex); the shadow (the source of internal demons) and the self (which provides a sense of unity in experience). The moot question that Jung addressed and which remains forever concerns how to avoid living “fucked up lives”. Note what Carl Jung had said thus: “Man has to cope with the problem of suffering. The Oriental wants to get rid of suffering by casting it off. Western man tries to suppress suffering with drugs….Look at the rebellion of modern youth in America, the sexual rebellion, and all that. These rebellions occur because the real, natural man is just in open rebellion against the utterly inhuman form of American life. Americans are absolutely divorced from nature in a way, and that accounts for that drug abuse.” The Beatles who had exemplified all this had nevertheless earned huge esteem as illustrated by a five-page cover story in Time, the bestselling news magazine from the US in late September 1967, thus: “In exchange for the teenyboppers, the new Beatles have captivated a different and much more responsible audience. They include college students, professors, and even business executives. Kids sense a quality of defiant honesty in The Beatles and admire their freedom and open-mindedness. They see them as peers who are able to try anything and can be relied on to tell it to them straight, and to tell them what they want to hear. As for the parents who are targets of The Beatles’ satirical gibes, they seem to be able to take a large number of direct hits and still come up smiling.”
Indian music and culture, as Ajoy Bose—the author of Across the Universe: The Beatles in India— says, entered almost surreptitiously into the consciousness of the Beatles at a time when they were increasingly preoccupied with narcotics and drugs but alas, the Beatles could not extricate themselves from the western culture and its personal and social demons. Their drug history is succinctly put thus: “First it was marijuana, introduced to them by Dylan in a New York hotel in August 1964. Known by myriad names such as grass, cannabis, hemp, weed, pot or ganja in India, this ancient narcotic plant, believed to have originated in the Himalayas, made a huge impact on the Beatles from the moment Dylan rolled them their first joint. The Beatles, from their early days playing in Hamburg nightclubs and even before that, were used to taking stimulants and amphetamines like Benzedrine and Preludin. These speed pills, often popped by students to keep awake while studying before exams, simulated an adrenaline rush sending their hearts racing and providing bursts of energy that kept them rocking through their frenetic, exhausting performances till the early hours of the morning. But smoking marijuana was a whole new experience and in fact quite the opposite, with its sensation of floating in time and space along with a feeling of slow elation. Pot also gave them giggles and, as Paul reminisced later, ‘we pissed ourselves laughing’ even as the Beatles savoured the new sensations that hemp brought them. Smoking marijuana seemed to be the hep thing to do in the emerging sixties. After all, Dylan, the new high prophet of rock culture had baptized them into the order.” Very soon, the Beatles graduated to LSD trips and even professed that the world would be a better place with pot and acid addiction!
To conclude, it is a moot question, all the same, if the acid-free, pot-free instrumental, hard and blues rock songs of Joe Satriani, which frequently make references to various science fiction stories and ideas, augur well for the healthy future of youthful humanity--like BTS’ Jungism does--as compared to the psychedelic genius Beatles’ short and long high-pitched outpourings.
By Annavajhula J.C. Bose,
Department of Economics, SRCC
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