Transformation - Robert A Johnson

Using the literary archetypes of Don Quixote, Hamlet and Faust the author examines the three distinct levels of human consciousness development that each of these figures represent - the simple or two-dimensional, the complex or three-dimensional and the redeemed or four-dimensional.;In Cervantes' Don Quixote, we see unconscious perfection, the simple man who is perfect without realizing it and who lives in a world where anything can happen. Hamlet represents conscious imperfection, man divided between the opposing forces within himself and full of despair in the face of the tragic nature of life. The redeemed state, conscious perfection, is represented by Goethe's Faust, the man who beat the devil.;The author argues that most of the world's male population are stranded in the intermediate stage of Hamlet's three-dimensional man - anxious, neurotic and incomplete. He shows that the true work of the redeemed state of maturity is to move through the three levels to the redeemed state of self-completion and harmony.