Janet O. Dallet is a Jungian analyst and freelance writer keenly interested in the human psyche, whose ‘reality’ she seeks to make’ visible’ in this work. She is particularly intrigued by the religious aspects of the psyche – whetted by a 40 year study of Jung’s teachings.

This dark God manifests in daily life through NUMINOSITY — any phenomenon that draws out forces of the multiple images of divinity within us, anything that we find marvellous, reverential, frightening or loathsome. It is not out of place to mention here that Jung even considers ‘God’ to be really a ‘God Image’ on the psyche. We limit the experience of God by our own mind.

In the present time, Dallet explains when science, technology, politicians, celebrities, cultural larger-than-life leaders like Freud and Jung, business magnates, computers and media moguls, phenomena like the UFOs etc., draw veneration hitherto reserved for God alone, more numinosity than we can comfortably handle, has broken loose.

This has tremendous repercussions. For instance, Janet believes that the car-crash-death of Diana Spenser was caused by her sudden discard of the conventional shelter (through norms) of her royal life. The powerful numinous within the energy-filled energy filled regal lady, burst free and assuming the shape of appropriate circumstance killed her, though she meant no harm to anyone. Indeed the nature of the Power of the Numinous is paradoxical. It will stop at nothing to get what it wants even at the expense of harming itself. It can be predatory – the more the ‘innocence’ in the victim, the greater the pleasure in the kill, as was the case with Diana, and many of us, though not with such drastic physical results. Dallet describes how a colleague, Gwilym, held her in thrall a long time before she realised the truth. In the complex scheme of things entailed by the numinous, Dallet had to pay a heavy price – an unsatisfactory relationship and stepping right out of character several times influenced by the evil energy of Gwilym.

The implied lesson is: It is divinely incumbent on us to know the dark side of ourselves and others. Indeed as the author came to realise she had the weakness of sharing Gwilym’s fame, and thus turned into an ‘unconscious’ victim. Gwilym, as it turned out, was nothing but a mediocre talent; he had used another’s paper to mushroom into fame. The author discovers the paper in a library, in keeping with the law of synchronicity, which binds all events with one’s inner situation. Such instances characterise Dallet’s writings throughout, giving it a powerful feel of atavism, evident in real life.

The last three chapters are primarily concerned with the transformation of the dark God. For one, the power is not to be repressed, as the case of Dallet’s patient, Oliver Novak, described in the second chapter, shows. Shock treatment of a stray impulse to cross-dress in his early teens has the suppressed numinous erupt with a vengeance, after many years. Thankfully, Oliver and his wife could endure his drastic symptoms, until the numinous subsides into constructive energy.

Even the author’s Tamanawas project (discussed in the second chapter) where she let willing psychotic patients undergo their symptoms rather than suppress them, points out that the key to transformation is the endurance of the numinous images in the minds, without succumbing to them. Letting out must of course, do this numinous gradually, preventing its sudden outburst by unconventional behaviour.

The process of transformation, however, is quite complex and has far reaching implications called individuation by Jung. It is like the Buddha’s Middle Path: learning to hold the polarities of life like the inextricably mixed good and evil in a perpetual tension without sawing in to either extreme. It means coming to terms with our psyche – us – to its contradictions, raw power and mercurial temperament. It is a realisation of Jung’s belief that an unresolved inner situation manifests as fate. This experience integrates our body and mind with the environment and events. Janet succinctly captures the relationship between psychology and religion – the different points of view of the same psyche:

"God within can be transformed, when the self demands and the ego assents."

The author concluded the work with a glimpse of her own individuation which she feels contributes her mite to world peace by keeping a part of the destructive power of the numinous in check.

This book will turn you inside out. Written with an amazing candour, the style is at once personal and universal; scientific, vital and vivid. A touch of feminine sensibility yokes hardcore reality with mental imagery with the vigour of genuine experience. The psyche is laid bare – frighteningly but transformationally – notwithstanding its inscrutable nature and different levels of operation. You may or may not go by technical terms, but the inherent truths will seize you.

This book is highly recommended for psychoanalysts, spiritual aspirants and any one interested in the fascinating mystery of the mind.