A little-discussed phenomenon is unfolding: the most conscious and awakened members of society are quietly withdrawing from public life. They are not doing so through media attention or as a form of protest. They are disappearing as much as possible, without drama or fanfare. They are choosing a solitary life over a social existence: they are severing ties with their social circles, abandoning their careers, quitting social media, and consciously and willingly investing themselves in other, more marginalized forms of society.
Carl Jung predicted this: he called it “the necessary withdrawal.” For when a person becomes more conscious, continuing to participate in the collective unconscious becomes burdensome, even painful. An ever-widening gap develops between individual consciousness and the collective unconscious, and this gap demands increasing energy to bear.
This withdrawal is inevitable, essential. Becoming more conscious creates a distance from society. It’s a concrete phenomenon, a mechanism of psychological survival in the face of the threats of mass unconsciousness. Feeling a need to leave everything behind, to become marginalized: these are not antisocial impulses, but an instinct for protection, a need for authenticity and freedom, a step towards liberation and individuality.
Society functions on collective, occult principles: egregores. These are collective thought forms, created and enriched by human physical, emotional, and psychological activities. They structure and cement lives in society. But they also limit aspirations for spiritual liberation and the individual path of life.
These egregores are not accidents, but the invisible building blocks of the system. And from this hidden aspect arise the unconscious aspects of society: conflicts, wars, certainties, habits, dogmas, opinions, thought groups, ideologies, projections, dualities, accusations… They operate through the unconscious participation of society’s members. From the moment a person awakens and begins to individualize their thoughts and life, they begin to free themselves from the collective and limiting egregors that previously governed their existence. They become a threat to the entire system; they feel out of step. Existential questions and problems then emerge.
Faced with this realization and these new difficulties, withdrawing quietly seems the best solution. Once eyes are opened, once consciousness has emerged, it is impossible to turn back. It is an invisible and incomprehensible process for society, but powerful and irreversible. Relationships become untenable, the meaning of life absurd. This is not arrogance or superiority; it is awareness.
A painful feeling of loneliness, of being different, of being misunderstood, of being mocked, then arises. This feeling of psychological loneliness is far more unbearable than physical loneliness, which remains objective and visible. This loneliness, however, is invisible. It has no backup plan or instruction manual. This existence is lived from a different and unique reality.
Withdrawing from public life is a healthy and normal protective reflex. It is not an escape or a hatred of society, but a respect for their individuality. To remain and maintain their former life would be a betrayal of their conscience, a constant effort doomed from the start.
George Gurdjieff said:
“Men are machines, and one can only expect mechanical actions from machines.” “When a man begins to know himself, he sees that he has nothing that is truly his own… [and] everything he has considered his own—his opinions, his thoughts, his convictions, his tastes, his habits, even his flaws and vices—all of this does not belong to him, but has either been formed by imitation or borrowed from something ready-made. By feeling this, a man can feel his nothingness. And by feeling his nothingness, a man must see himself as he truly is.”
To awaken is to perceive an entire society on autopilot, completely controlled by invisible forces of which it is not even aware. It is to perceive a society constantly projecting its shadows outward. It is to perceive a society ignorant of its own divine spark, which is squandering the spiritual dimension of its existence without even realizing it.
It’s like watching a bad movie, a mass psychosis, a zombie apocalypse. Because Jung called this the weight of the gaze. Participation in this game then becomes impossible.
Withdrawal becomes a spiritual obligation. But discreetly, so as not to become a target and not to feed the collective energies of conflict. Once on one’s unique life path, once the process of individualization has begun, it becomes impossible to participate in social life as before, because the gap is too wide, too unbearable, too false, too incompatible; the mask of falsehood is too heavy.
To withdraw is to preserve oneself and to be able to develop one’s divine individuality; it is to finally become who one truly is. This is a social phenomenon that is nowhere mentioned, that is not the subject of any study, because its primary characteristic is spiritual.