A community at the intersection of psychology and religion, action and contemplation. Recent publication by Jakob Lusensky, 'C.G Jung: Face to Face with Christianity - Conversations on Dreaming the Myth Onward' published by Chiron Publications.
Christianity already has a better concept than "the unconscious", namely the Kingdom of God/Heaven. It was utterly central in the teaching of Jesus. Only in Matthew's gospel it occurs 32 times. But its meaning has been reduced to obedience to His rule, which is a platitude. Jung is right, in a sense, because the mythological and mystical side of Christianity has been smothered, presumably because of its paganistic connotations. On the other hand, the psychoanalytic unconscious is incompatible with Christian theology. Ann Conrad Lammers ("In God's shadow", 1994) argues against Murray Stein and others. She says that Jung is too biased from the start in that he rejects many of the central tenets of theology (p. 151).
There's been only two things that have helped me realize this in my journey with Christianity. The first is Eastern Orthodox Christianity, of which I joined 7 years ago. Their doctrine of Theosis and focus on inner transformation leads to inner work, but too much focus on asceticism as the method for inner healing is a big trap in the EO Church. The second one is the book The Kingdom Within by John Sanford, a Christian Jungian analyst. He argues that the Kingdom of God within us that Christ speaks of in the gospels can be seen as inner Wholeness and Individuation; this along with Orthodoxy has been the most holistic experience of Christianity for me
The kingdom of God is perceived through the inner eye; but it is not "within". It's because it transcends space and time. As I discuss in my latest article, it has consistently been subjected to ‘immanentization’. See: "Some remarks on Wolfhart Pannenberg’s theology, the immanentization of the eschaton and the misinterpretation of the kingdom of God".
Id love to hear a conversation/interview with Sean and Brendan Graham Dempsey. It seems like his project of Metamodern Christianity has some synergies with what you are working toward.
Jung was haunted & mesmerized by Christianity. His memoirs details his inner conflict with it til he died. His late thoughts particularly are striking and thought further development of it was absolutely crucial. So Jung would have loved this.
Great talk! Shekhinah is really central in Kabbalah. I think it is a mistake to think that Alchemy is gnostic in the sense that it rejects matter and regards it as evil. It is rather a transformation and perfection of matter and spirit. I think we have to lean towards the good. A really good book that I am reading at the moment is 'Carl Jung and Maximus the Confessor on psychic development'. It is really dense. A lot of mystics and individuals in history are on the left-hand path. They are in a zone of danger outside of the conventions of society. It seems that The Grail Myth is more central and perhaps something that is eternal although Erich Neumann points out in The Origins and History of Consiousness that Ego-consciousness is an emergent process. People where not as individuated in for example the middle ages as they are today. Campbell: "...One writer of the Grail legend starts his long epic with a short poem saying, “Every act has both good and evil results.” Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results. The best we can do is lean toward the light, toward the harmonious relationships that come from compassion with suffering, from understanding the other person. This is what the Grail is about. And this is what comes out in the romance."
I have listened to Sean McGrath talk about Jakob Böhme. It is this idea that we precive darkness in God when we are in sin. Micheal Martin is a person who is really interesting and he talks about sophiology. Worth investigating. *** When I studied advertising briefly I got introduced to Martinism under very strange circumstances and I was told by a former member by the order that it was the path towards evil. I have read works by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and although he is inspired by Böhme I actually think he has a gnostic interpretation of him. Hegel and C G Jung are also influenced by Böhme.
This is a gem. It is so interesting to see how this relates to Aion and the integration of opposites something that Nietzsche also thinks about but not in terms of Christ and Anti-Christ. It is clear that Faust was the first step in bringing God down from heaven into the human psyche. It would be wonderful if you could have a talk with Bernardo Kastrup about idealism.
Interesting talk. I think it is important to speak of Christ as an archetype from the perspective of the the psychotic experience. I have read stories of people who think that they are Christ during a psychotic break and this is a recurring phenomena. I have experienced psychotic episodes and they where very religious experiences and without help from Jungian analysis and till a certain extent medications I do not know where I would have ended up. I considered suicide at the time.
It was Augustine who invented the concept of the invisible Church. He called it the City of God, inhabited by the people predestined to salvation. The profane people belong to the Earthly City. We cannot know who belongs to which city. I am critical of Bonhoeffer. He espoused Bultmann's concept of demythologization, i.e., to divest of mythological forms by formulating the symbols in intellectual words that modern people can understand. This runs exactly counter to Jung's view. After all, he introduced the idea of the symbolic life. But Bonhoeffer thought that Bultmann didn't go far enough: "My opinion of it today would be that he went not 'too far,' as most people thought, but rather not far enough. It's not only 'mythological' concepts like miracles, ascension, and so on (which in principle can't be separated from concepts of God, faith, etc.!) that are problematic, but 'religious' concepts as such. You can't separate God from the miracles (as Bultmann thinks); instead, you must be able to interpret and proclaim them *both* 'nonreligiously.'" (Letter: May 5, 1944) It led to the "Death of God"-movement in the sixties, which soon petered out.
Jung actually states his distaste for Bultmann one of his published letters. But I doubt he ever read Bultmann. In reality, Bultmann's ideas are much closer to Jung than most people ever realize. If you read the "Entmythologisierungs-Essay" (Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung), you will find that all Bultmann is talking about is nothing more than a hermeneutical/exegetical tool for gaining a proper understanding of Biblical texts: he makes clear that "myths" are concerned with talking about real things (i.e. not just fairy tales, fabulations or run-away metaphors) but not objective reality in the naturalistic, positivistic sense of 19th and 20th century science. Instead, the texts are speaking truths of human existence. Since these are not immediately understandable, they necessitate interpretation. Notice how similar this is to Jung's understanding in which myths as much as dreams express psychological truths that are in need of interpretation. This even enables Jung to speak of "God" purely psychologically, as a psychological constant and symbol of the self. He repeatedly defends himself against the accusation of "theology" by claiming to make no metaphysical claims about any god, only speaking of the image of god within psychological bounds. Bultmanns "Entmythologisierungsprogramm" on the other hand does not in fact do away with myths altogether. The "mythical" Bible is supposed to be read in church and remain as such. The "program" only has a purpose in helping preachers come to an understanding adequate both to the text and their listeners.
I'm skeptical about Eckhart's teaching. It conflicts with Christian theism in that it has strong pantheistic overtones. Equally controversial is the theologian Paul Tillich. Similar to Eckhart, he views God as the Ground of Being. John P. Dourley ("Paul Tillich, Carl Jung and the Recovery of Religion") says: "Again in remarkable affinity with Eckhart and Jung's appropriation of Eckhart, Tillich suggests that the fourth could be a divinity "above" the Trinity or that the "Father" be revisioned as a common ground from which the distinct persons proceed. [...] But even in terms of his own amplification of quaternity Tillich goes on immediately to identify this "common source of divinity", the fourth, as maternal and the furthest reach of divinity, the ground of being itself, understood here as the first principle of divine life." (pp. 78-79)
To be fair, a lot this season so far has been about pre-Constantinian Christianity, where Christians believed all kinds of wild stuff. Ekhart is quite tame by comparison.
"We have said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true that without extension there can be no love. ²These reflect a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one that always operates. ³It is the law by which you create and were created. ⁴It is the law that unifies the Kingdom, and keeps it in the Mind of God. ⁵To the ego, the law is perceived as a means of getting rid of something it does not want. ⁶To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your mind. ⁷To the Holy Spirit it is the law of extension. ⁸To the ego it is the law of deprivation. ⁹It therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how you choose to apply it. ¹⁰This choice is up to you, but it is not up to you to decide whether or not you will utilize the law. ¹¹Every mind must project or extend, because that is how it lives, and every mind is life. 2. The ego’s use of projection must be fully understood before the inevitable association between projection and anger can be finally undone. ²The ego always tries to preserve conflict. ³It is very ingenious in devising ways that seem to diminish conflict, because it does not want you to find conflict so intolerable that you will insist on giving it up. ⁴The ego therefore tries to persuade you that _it_ can free you of conflict, lest you give the ego up and free yourself. ⁵Using its own warped version of the laws of God, the ego utilizes the power of the mind only to defeat the mind’s real purpose. ⁶It projects conflict from your mind to other minds, in an attempt to persuade you that you have gotten rid of the problem. 3. There are two major errors involved in this attempt. ²First, strictly speaking, conflict cannot be projected because it cannot be shared. ³Any attempt to keep part of it and get rid of another part does not really mean anything. ⁴Remember that a conflicted teacher is a poor teacher and a poor learner. ⁵His lessons are confused, and their transfer value is limited by his confusion. ⁶The second error is the idea that you can get rid of something you do not want by giving it away. ⁷Giving it is how you _keep_ it. ⁸The belief that by seeing it outside you have excluded it from within is a complete distortion of the power of extension. ⁹That is why those who project are vigilant for their own safety. ¹⁰They are afraid that their projections will return and hurt them. ¹¹Believing they have blotted their projections from their own minds, they also believe their projections are trying to creep back in. ¹²Since the projections have not left their minds, they are forced to engage in constant activity in order not to recognize this. 4. You cannot perpetuate an illusion about another without perpetuating it about yourself. ²There is no way out of this, because it is impossible to fragment the mind. ³To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind cannot attack or be attacked. ⁴The belief that it can, an error the ego always makes, underlies its whole use of projection. ⁵It does not understand what mind is, and therefore does not understand what _you_ are. ⁶Yet its existence is dependent on your mind, because the ego is your belief. ⁷The ego is a confusion in identification. ⁸Never having had a consistent model, it never developed consistently. ⁹It is the product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds that are misusing their power. 5. _Do not be afraid of the ego._ ²It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it. ³Do not project the responsibility for your belief in it onto anyone else, or you will preserve the belief. ⁴When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego’s existence you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they come from an attempt to project responsibility for your own errors. ⁵But having accepted the errors as yours, do not keep them. ⁶Give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undone completely, so that all their effects will vanish from your mind and from the Sonship as a whole. 6. The Holy Spirit will teach you to perceive beyond your belief, because truth is beyond belief and His perception is true. ²The ego can be completely forgotten at any time, because it is a totally incredible belief, and no one can keep a belief he has judged to be unbelievable. ³The more you learn about the ego, the more you realize that it cannot be believed. ⁴The incredible cannot be understood because it is unbelievable. ⁵The meaninglessness of perception based on the unbelievable is apparent, but it may not be recognized as being beyond belief, because it is made _by_ belief. 7. The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable. ²You who made the ego by believing the unbelievable cannot make this judgment alone. ³By accepting the Atonement for yourself, you are deciding against the belief that you can be alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally part of you. ⁴This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. ⁵Your wholeness has no limits because being is infinity." A Course In Miracles (1975) Author: _Jesus Christ_ "Psychology and the Cross...." Thats a very early passage in the Course, focusing in very highly psychological terms -- using the best available ideas on the Earth in order to fulfill his promise, "I have much to say to you all, but you cannot bear it now. But a time is coming when I will speak plainly." John Hope this helps you on your way. It's so strange to me to share this with people, because people don't believe that Someone who walked on water, gave sight to the blind, overcame death and appeared to his disciples after, could possibly give a teaching to us in our modern era.... And so many people sincerely seek the truth of Christ, His teachings; and here it is, His teachings. See how Christ's own teachings differ from the church. Do the daily lessons. Be one. _Adonai_
Eckhart says: "When I saw into myself I saw God in me" ... "Where God is there is the soul, and where the soul is there is God" ... "the Ground of God and the Ground of the soul are one nature" (Harkness, "Mysticism", p. 106). Carl Jung embraces Eckhart, as he "understands God as a psychological value." Eckhart says that "man is truly God, and God is truly man" and "[t]he soul is all things because she is an image of God, and as such she is also the kingdom of God" (CW 6). The Church was appalled with Eckhart's teaching. According to Augustine, humanity is completely fallen and divine nature is extinct from the human soul. Only a broken image of God remains. Luther, too, says that "human nature has completely fallen." But, thanks to the *external* righteousness of Christ, the Christian is also completely righteous. (Interestingly, also the Neoplatonist Iamblichus broke with Plotinus and argued that the human soul is completely fallen. Nevertheless, we may ascend to God through theurgic practices.) Is human nature completely fallen or not? From a scientific perspective, the soul is neural activity. Thus, it lacks divine nature. How is it possible to argue, in the modern time, that human beings share something substantive with God?
I think this was my favorite episode this season. What a beautiful message. I really enjoyed Dr. McGrath's discussion of Eckhart Non-dualist theology, and Eckhart's relation to the Beguines. This episode made me actually open up my Bible to read Gal: 3. The Secular Christ is by far my favorite Podcast.
Just remember that Clement of Alexandria is a controversial figure. He was removed from the Catholic calendar in the 17th century because his doctrines were regarded as suspect. Clement believed that mortals who turn to the Christian faith become gods and will remain immortal gods in the afterlife. By wearing white garments and imitating Christ one is "practicing to be a god." Jung and Luther both repudiated 'imitatio Christi' as a way of self-divinization. Augustine contends that humans can no longer move towards reunion with God because sin blocks the path. Clement was way too optimistic. The mystic Johannes Tauler spells out the truth: "Whenever you ascribe the divine to yourself, you change the divine into the creaturely and obscure the divine" ("Predigten", bd. 1, p. 94).
What seems to bolster McGrath's thesis is that, as long as people were religious, the secular state worked reasonably well. But now, as Americans are losing their religion, democracy erodes rapidly. It is a paradox. The secular democratic state is eroding because people have acquired a secular mindset and become "enlightened" or "woke". I suppose something similar is happening in India. Phil Miles, in two articles in journal Kategoria (Nos. 22, 23, 2001) has an explanation for this. Our society believes in a harmful myth, according to which pluralism together with a relativistic view of truth produces tolerance, while a belief in absolute truths leads to tyranny. In fact, it is the other way round. Tyranny develops out of relativism, while tolerance is associated with absolute values.
It is worth remembering that it wasn't Christianity who invented the notion of restraining the bodily passions. Both Eastern and Western philosophical and religious thought reverberate the theme of restraining bodily passions through self-discipline and self-denial. The practices of self-mortification expected of Aztec priests were horrendous. The ostensibly this-worldly ideal of Christianity mustn't be understood politically, because the future ideal is the recovery of earthly Paradise. It is really a transcendental concept, well-known in the history of religion. For example, Australian aboriginals have a longing to recover the primordial epoch that began immediately after the creation, which was a paradisiacal age without suffering and death. Death came into being because the communications with heaven had been violently interrupted (cf. Eliade, "The Quest", ch. 5). The immanent ideal of Christianity belongs to mythic, sacred history. It transcends the socialist ideal of material welfare.
I love this interview. It brings to light in my perception that the Christ mind is able to see the whole of the psycho-spiritual connection. Not to leave out Nietche, I think it can be seen how Nietche encountered the shadow on the Luciferic end of the spectrum, and Jung encountered the shadow more from the Ahrimanic end. Each could taste the powerful will of those two feet of the entire shadow, or Abraxas. Christ had ascended to the head of it all as Steiner was able to perceive. Anything lower than the Christ impulse is from the realm of the shadow, but all is part of the whole cosmic being. Steiner, in builder’s terms, was master at leveling the bubble.
Actually, today many believe that the Gospels were written in the second century and that Marcion (c.85-c.160) compiled the first New Testament. If it weren't for him Paul's letters might have been left out. It was Marcion who discovered Galatians. In the Acts of the Apostles, written in the mid-second century, they made room for Paul's letters by toning down his radical message . Until this day, his theology of the cross remains a bone in the throat. Bertrand Russell ("A History of Western Philosophy") calls Marcus Aurelius a pathetic character whose reign was a failure. Russell's critique of Stoicism is rather damaging, I think.
My two cents: 1. Marcion's popularity has indeed grown, especially among scholars who show up on RU-vid. But they are still the minority. Bart Ehrman doesn't buy it, for instance. 2. Even if Marcion compiled the collection of a Gospel (a proto Luke) and 10 letters from Paul, that doesn't mean he wrote them (which is what some think).
Absolutely facinating first episode, such a rich conversation filled with an enormous depth of ideas and concepts. Dr. McGrath never disappoints! I am really looking forward to this third season!
Why did the Greeks and Romans drop their God's for Christianity? Read the history!!!!. They did not dropped they were forced. They had genocide. Students of mystery schools were brutally killed. What Julius Cesar did in Egypt in Alexndtia burnd Library with 50 000 scrools. Installation of Christianity was similar to the installation of Communisam in Eastern Europe. All.the followers of mystery schools were tortured and killer that why. You did not have knowledge to talk to Hillman
It could be argued that instead of seeing conscience as part of "the light side of the id" (as coming from the unconscious below), that it makes more sense to see it as part of a superconscious above (something which is equally outside of our conscious awareness as the unconscious, but metaphysically distinct and higher)
In this connection, Louis Komjathy's book is worth mentioning: "Cultivating Perfection: Mysticism and Self-transformation in Early Quanzhen Daoism" (2007). In the Quanzhen school, a process of self-cultivation is required in order to release the celestial spirit from its material prison. The self is seen as an alchemical crucible, wherein the work of internal alchemy is conducted, leading to immortality and perfection (p. 98). Self-transformation means that the adept works to transform his/her inner nature-the self (p. 240). The alchemical gold is symbolic of the purified condition of inner self. Interestingly, the medieval Quanzhen Taoists had a notion of "observing the internal landscape," in connection with abandonment of mundane concerns. Zhongli Quan says: "Storied terraces, blue-green pearls, female pleasures, reed pipes, precious delicacies, extraordinary luxuries, wondrous herbs, strange flowers, luminous beings, flowing radiances-each arouses the eyes like a painting does. Humans who have not awakened will take these to be a real, a sign that they have reached the Celestial Palace. They do not know that it is only the Inner Courtyard of one's own body." (p. 190)
One big issue is her example for allegorical theology and its link to theology being Origen. Yes he was brilliant but he was also a heretic, many of his teahcings whwre contrary to what most of the chuch fathers tought, there are so many other ealy writters who are actually saints she could have mentioned.
God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind indicating hostility from God even towards righteous Job. Job was pre-Tabernacle. The Tabernacle being the mechanism by which man could be at peace before God. The Tabernacle speaks of Christ. God spoke from the Tabernacle even as He thundered from Sinai. God spoke softly to Elijah, indicating peace between the Almighty and His prophet. If Jung was stuck at Job he missed the point completely. We are not mere men 'under the sun' as Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes. We are blood-purchased through Jesus Christ.
At this point in my understanding of analysis, psychology, religion etc I see ego strengthening, growth and ego transcendence as a continua that is continually interdependent. And I completey agree that it is God/the logos/spirit that is the transforming agent, not the self this is beyond freud and jung, however is more in sync with Bion. I dont think Jungs Self actually gets at this, Bion’s O is much closer, but perhaps a rapprochement between Bion’s O and Jung’s self via an incarnational (and crucified and resurrected) real God - Christ.
Everyone is sick and tired of the current way of things. Some are looking for renewal in politics while others are looking for their redemption in the bankrupt American Religion. It's time people began looking within for their renewal and redemption because what we're seeking is also seeking us.
