Jung and Religion

[Xenophon]

I have always had a wierd relationship with religion, being the son of two Unitarian Ministers. Religion has always been a big part of my life, but in an unconventional sense. I never went to Sunday worship (though I taught sunday school in my youth), but I often read through sections of my parents sermons, and discuss them when I was growing up. Lately, in a course on Jung I have been taking, I have discovered a new interest in Religion and Spirituality developing.

The biggest problem that I had with traditional religions when I was growing up is that I couldn't believe in god as some old man, sitting on a throne in heaven surveying us. Nothing I had ever seen or heard gave me any sense that there was some sort of consciousness directing our world. If there was a god at all, I could only imagine it as a concept or force that was beyond our understand.

My latest view is that God is the of order in the universe. It is the laws of physics, it is the essence of life, it is light. When you start looking at everything religion as a metaphoric personification, it all makes much more sense. In fact, when you start looking at the figures in religion as Symbols as Jung did, it becomes very clear that all religions are very similar. They exist as a way of translating complex philisophical and psychological patterns into something CONCRETE that people can understand.

If you look at the story of Adam and Eve, you are really reading about the birth of consciousness. It is the same story as Prometheus stealing fire from the heavens. It tells us some interesting things. First, it is a simple reminder that suffering is something that can only exist with consiousness. But it also says that with the birth of consciousness we gained the ability to understand, to abstract the universe into conscious constructs.

Jesus, is the "Hero" of the bible, and his story also has to be looked at in a metaphoric light. Jesus (Hero) is our ability to evolve. He tells us that survival is really the process of death and rebirth as something new. He reminds us that real answers cannot be found inside the system which needs to be explained, but that they can only come from the outside.

I think that many intuitives share my aversion to the literal reading of the bible that Fundamentalists seem to be espousing today. I think it is quite a sad perversion of a document, that holds many keen insights hidden in stories that a senser can understand. I would really like to hear what people have to say about what the bible tells us in the language of metaphor.

[YourLocalCynic]

I relate completely to the view of "god" being more along the lines of the order of nature, or a force of some sort. Interesting.

[atypical]

Your views on god are something like what I was starting to arrive at before I threw my faith out the window a year ago. How's this:

"In the begining, was the word, and the word was with god and the word was god" - john 1

Word here is from the greek "logos" which also meant to the greeks "the unseen order of things". So... basically this equates god, jesus, the revelation of god, and the laws of physics, mathematics, etc.

Fundamentalists are usually too hitched on using this passage to prove the trinity and thus disprove jehova's witnesses to notice the beaty in it.

[Johnny]

Yes, I agree that Jung's take on Christianity and other religions is quite deep. As I understand him, he considered religion be a very important stepping stone towards a good quality sunset in one's own psychological life.

To me, Jung's advocacy for religion is a paradoxical one, because it is philosophically dangerous to advocate for a 2-party psychology (the psychological world we know and act upon consciously, and then the psychological world we cannot truly apprehend consciously - though it inspires the world we do act upon). Granted, Jung's interest was not really a philosophical one, but his analytical psychology rests on the assumption of a collective unconscious, archetypes and an unknowable Self from which our individual consciousnesses grow...and the mechanisms to test their efficacy, to challenge them, to apprehend them without our prejudices, our subjectivity, even our intuition (as you are revering here and I with you) is impossible.

In the world of philosophy, the framework for Jung's psychology was already established by Kant, and philosophers challenge Kant for the same thing that psychologists challenge Jung, "How can you assume something exists for which you can never discuss intelligently, and then make a show of its importance and value?" Such a question eventually inspired the philosophy of phenomenology and rendered the unknowable world (including God) dead without so much as a funeral.

To boil it down to the essence, my question is this, "What good is a soul that we cannot sell to the Devil?"

So perhaps there is value in studying Jung for efforts to distill all religions in human history down to one religion, at least for the sake of fostering tolerance and acceptance of others for their own personal religious beliefs. However, in my own study of Jung so far, he does a poor job of making much of a difference for it. Why? Because even if the Devil truly holds some kind of power over us as humans, we still must agree upon it or the value of our soul is lost...kinda like the stock market... :lol:

The whole of analytical psychology is no different. One either reveres analytical psychology for this, or one renders it useless.

I don't think it's at all a bad thing to embrace analytical psychology or enjoy personal spirituality if one wishes to do so. I, for one, enjoy spirituality. But the Bible in metaphor, in my opinion, offers us nothing to brag about except for an active imagination.

:sombrero:

[Aryan]

Wherever people cannot apply logic they apply metaphors and analogies which complicates the situation.
Socially i think God is a concept that has eveolved due to the need of people to feel secured in unknown or uncontrolable domains.
God is just another theory among the countless others.
The truth is yet to arrive ...

[booyalab]

Wherever people cannot apply logic they apply metaphors and analogies which complicates the situation.
Socially i think God is a concept that has eveolved due to the need of people to feel secured in unknown or uncontrolable domains.
God is just another theory among the countless others.
The truth is yet to arrive ...

If no one has the 'truth' now, it's unlikely it will come to a 'chosen one' in the night...and it's even more unlikely that it would have any impact on anything whatsoever. Everyone would probably just treat it as just another philosophical trend, something to discuss over coffee or argue about in a forum.

[Xenophon]

So perhaps there is value in studying Jung for efforts to distill all religions in human history down to one religion, at least for the sake of fostering tolerance and acceptance of others for their own personal religious beliefs. However, in my own study of Jung so far, he does a poor job of making much of a difference for it. Why? Because even if the Devil truly holds some kind of power over us as humans, we still must agree upon it or the value of our soul is lost...kinda like the stock market... :lol:

I think that in most religions there is no differentiation between God and the Devil. It is a wierd thing about Christianity that it has a need to project all the evil of the world onto something else. Most religions just look as God as the ultimate order, which is neither good nor bad, it just is.

Another interesting take that I read was presented by Prof. Jordan B. Peterson in his book "Maps of Meaning". He says that the Devil or "the Adversary" as he likes to call it, is the that which keeps us from evolving. The Adversary is the confining force of order, it is what makes people scared of the unknown, and blinds people to weaknesses and the decay of the system of order to which they belong.

As for the collective unconscious, I think that most people dismiss it because they lack a clear understanding of what it is. All the collective unconscious is a structure to the mind that exists outside of consciousness. If you think about this, it would be impossible for this not to exist. Do you have to think about it every time you want your heart to beat? Do you make yourself start shivering, or sweating? No, these are unconscious reactions that occur in EVERY human being. These are collective unconscious traits, Jung just took this a step further and said there is a layer between innate instincts and conscious thought. He chose to study this layer by examining commonalities in religion and myth, which is quite an ingenious approach, but it is definately not the only way to discover these traits. Ethology and Neuroscience have been making huge leaps and bounds in this area, and I think that the collective unconscious theory is coming back in a big way.

[Johnny]

I think that in most religions there is no differentiation between God and the Devil.
That's fine. My point was that the value of a soul, a devil, or a god is entirely dependent on us...but I enjoy leveraging metaphors and symbols that are easy for most of us here to understand to make them. Again, it is pretty much impossible for Jung to argue for the value and efficacy of archetypes , and I'm also not yet sure that suggesting some kind of intellectual tolerance for that which one may otherwise find personally repulsive has much value either.


As for the collective unconscious, I think that most people dismiss it because they lack a clear understanding of what it is. All the collective unconscious is a structure to the mind that exists outside of consciousness. If you think about this, it would be impossible for this not to exist. Do you have to think about it every time you want your heart to beat? Do you make yourself start shivering, or sweating? No, these are unconscious reactions that occur in EVERY human being. These are collective unconscious traits, Jung just took this a step further and said there is a layer between innate instincts and conscious thought. He chose to study this layer by examining commonalities in religion and myth, which is quite an ingenious approach, but it is definately not the only way to discover these traits. Ethology and Neuroscience have been making huge leaps and bounds in this area, and I think that the collective unconscious theory is coming back in a big way.

Do you really think the universe, the human body, and the human mind truly care what we do and don't understand about an archetype or a collective unconscious?

[Xenophon]

I think that in most religions there is no differentiation between God and the Devil.
That's fine. My point was that the value of a soul, a devil, or a god is entirely dependent on us...but I enjoy leveraging metaphors and symbols that are easy for most of us here to understand to make them. Again, it is pretty much impossible for Jung to argue for the value and efficacy of archetypes , and I'm also not yet sure that suggesting some kind of intellectual tolerance for that which one may otherwise find personally repulsive has much value either.

I'm not really sure I understand what you are trying to say, but I will try to respond anyways. The archetypes are just the unconscious structure of patterns that have been reoccuring constantly throughout the course of human history. I don't see how it could possibly not be be valuable to study the fundamental framework in which human beings operate.

As for the value of a soul, or a devil, or a god being a personal thing, I completely agree. Jung has to focus on these things because they are wide spread phenomenon. He matched these ideas with what he observed in thousands of patients. If you don't believe in the soul, or god, or the devil, then you probably have something else that fulfils that role. Jung was trying to look beyond "God" and "the Devil" and "the Soul" to find out what role these things play in each person by virtue of them being a human being.

Lastly, I don't know what you mean by "intellectual tolerance for that which you find repulsive". Are you refering to the religious concepts of "god, the devil and the soul" If so, then you obviously have those roles fulfiled through other means. Do you find Mothers repulsive? Do you find Fathers Repulsive? Do you find Heroes repulsive?


Do you really think the universe, the human body, and the human mind truly care what we do and don't understand about an archetype or a collective unconscious?

That's a bit of a cop out. I mean, there probably isn't a whole lot that the universe cares about. The human body and the human mind? Well, they care as much as their owner cares about understanding himself and the world around him. Of course, none of this has any value if you have decided that the collective unconscious was a bunch of balonga, however, obviously you don't think Jung was a complete nutcase, as he invented the framework for the MBTI that we all know and love.

[Johnny]

Jung was trying to look beyond "God" and "the Devil" and "the Soul" to find out what role these things play in each person by virtue of them being a human being.

...Do you find Mothers repulsive? Do you find Fathers Repulsive? Do you find Heroes repulsive?


Do you really think the universe, the human body, and the human mind truly care what we do and don't understand about an archetype or a collective unconscious?

That's a bit of a cop out. I mean, there probably isn't a whole lot that the universe cares about. The human body and the human mind? Well, they care as much as their owner cares about understanding himself and the world around him. Of course, none of this has any value if you have decided that the collective unconscious was a bunch of balonga, however, obviously you don't think Jung was a complete nutcase, as he invented the framework for the MBTI that we all know and love.

I think you're blurring the line, Xeno. There is a big difference between feeling pain because your ankle is sprained and feeling guilt over breaking a law or a social convention. Jung takes the term "instinct" and then goes into the world of imagination to discuss it, and then he tries to give imagination substantive value. It is this leap to imagination that I challenge and question, not that I was born of a mother and a father.

The "cop out" you see is not a cop out to me. It is a valid challenge.