Religion, the Undiscovered
Self, and the Future
Author: Bonnie McCarson
Published on: November 1, 2001
From: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/jungian_psychology/83584
"What will the future
bring? From time immemorial this question has occupied men's minds,
though not always to the same degree. Historically, it is chiefly
in times of physical, political, economic, and spiritual distress
that men's eyes turn with anxious hope to the future, and when anticipations,
utopias, and apocalyptic visions multiply." - Carl Jung, "The
Undiscovered Self"
In the wake of recent events we are seeing people flocking to
churches, mosques, and synagogues, picking up and dusting off religious
practices that in less stressful times had been laid aside. This
is quite normal and natural. Mankind since the earliest beginnings
has been religious by nature. The search for meaning and purpose
is inherent in our being, and perhaps, so is the drive to understand
whatever outside forces threaten our being. Prayers and offerings,
even to the point of human sacrifice, testify over the centuries
to man's attempts to appease threatening forces and produce kinder,
gentler conditions for himself. Other animals survive at an instinctual
level. Man seeks to understand the factors that affect his survival.
As the human race marched forward through time, modern civilization
demythologized much that lay in the realm of religion to our predecessors.
In the Twentieth Century the demythologizing reached its apogee
in the "God is dead" movement. Afterward, in the U.S.,
and perhaps other parts of the world, compensation occurred with
charismatic movements and a return to fundamentalism in many belief
systems. But do we sometimes move collectively in the name of religion
without consciousness of what we are doing? Jung dealt at length
with the topic. His work can be found in Psychology and Religion,
one volume of the Collected Works, as well as in parts of other
works and in the essay, "The Undiscovered Self."
The spiritual element, which is a part of our psyche, urges us
to seek out the unknown and unknowable, but our concern and attention
to the here-and-now of the world often subverts that part of us.
In our modern lives we may have let it become "dead" to
us in a sense, until we are faced with a situation beyond our understanding.
Thus, it is natural to return to what we consider our religious
faith in a time of crisis. Yet, there is danger in returning blindly,
for the spiritual element is expressed in symbols, and religious
experience too easily becomes practiced and perpetuated as creed
or dogma, even mass movements, that have failed to recognize the
meanings of the symbols.
Jung himself considered "religion" the relationship
of the individual to the numinous. The collective practices of
so-called religions he called "creeds." In order for
a person truly to exercise the religious function, he must be open
to becoming more aware of himself and his relationship with the
unknowable. The experience, the inner transcendence, provides the
individual a ground that prevents his being swept up in a mass.
Without the individual quest and experience, one is vulnerable
to troubling doubts. Those secret, perhaps even semiconscious,
doubts in turn may be overcompensated for by practicing a creed
blindly, without true examination at an experiential level of the
validity of the creed for oneself. Taken to its extreme, this is
fanaticism. Fanaticism is often so far removed from its origin
as to bear little resemblance to the experience which birthed it.
Therein lies its great danger. Driven by an innate spiritual urge,
the fanatic may have great zeal but attaches it blindly to whatever
is available to fill the void. He has subverted his quest for true
spirituality by taking the quick, easy answer - the one that requires
little true knowledge of self and the great unknowing. Perhaps
fundamentalism, which can move to fanaticism, is easy to adopt,
also, because it deals in the concrete, rather than vague symbols
which challenge us to much self-searching in order to decipher
their meanings.
Some of Jung's writing on religion and psychology came at another
great time of crisis in the world, the period leading up to World
War II. Setting an example for all of us, Jung stepped back from
the dogma, the propaganda of the collective masses and sought to
understand the workings of the human psyche. Each of us, like Jung,
can best serve humanity by following our spiritual impulses to
more consciousness of who we are and then by relating to each other
not with creed and doctrine, but as one enlightened human to another.
References and Suggestions for Further Reading:
Jung, C.G., Collected Works
Singer, June, Boundries of the Soul. Rev. Ed. 1994; New York,
NY: Anchor Books, Doubleday
Storr, Anthony, The Essential Jung. 1983, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press; pp. 238-250; 349-363
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