Why do we need the idea of some god that is humanized?
Same reason why we humanize our pets....a stupid human trick to pretend like we understand.
With language, our brains were nudged to tune into a common prediction instead of personal prediction. When one relies on others to know what is real or not, they aren't using their own senses to confirm it, whether by thought or experience. Language replaced the need to experience something to consider it real.
Here's a documentary of the Piraha Amazonian tribe that were being told about Jesus. Notice how they do not take the past as fact, just because it was in the Bible, etc.
I agree with you, Rob, on the need for experiential truth. I think that's what people in this age of ubiquitous nihilism are craving more than anything else, not to be told what is true or what to believe but to experience it firsthand. This is why I've been increasingly focused on the individuation process - listening to one's intuition, balanced against the intellect/senses/feelings, the intuition of which nudges one toward fulfilling the unique objectives that each individual is put on this planet to achieve - because it about experiencing subjective truth firsthand instead of listening to the media, government, or approved "experts" to tell us what is true.
It's pretty crazy that there's a sizeable minority that thinks that it would be better to go back to the old ways, as if those times weren't fraught with injustice!
"If you can see farther than others, it is "because you are standing on the shoulders of giants," which is a famous quote attributed to Isaac Newton, meaning that your achievements are built upon the work and knowledge of those who came before you." - Google
I began the Children of Job substack with an exploration of the book of Job and the Tanakh, the Old Testament, with particular reference to Jack Miles’ God (which I recommend). His interpretation of the book of Job echoes Carl Jung from fifty years earlier, with Answer to Job, a book I first read in my twenties.
Mission crept over the ensuing months, until I wound up writing a lot more about standard sociocultural engineering operating procedures, the Jew Question, World War 2, and even taking an unprecedented (non-voluntary) dive into Trumponomics. Early on, I came on yr site, and yr writing on international bankers had an influence on my understanding of the JQ, and we argued (a bit) over DJT & movies.
Now it's a few days before Lent, during which I plan to take an Internet sabbatical, and I have six weeks’ worth of posts scheduled to air in my absence. None of them were about Job (until now), but I have been wondering if, when (or if?) I return, I will finally get back to the God stuff.
Then, out of the blue, you write a piece about the book of Job. Evidently, Substack abhors a vacuum!
Reading yr piece I felt my response getting longer & longer, the more I read. Now it’s 2,000 words and that means it will be a full article which will get queued up behind all the other posts and won't be online until near the end of Lent (sorry); but it may herald the return to the God-stuff I was hoping for!
Time is not what it seems to be. Watch this space. :)
Thanks Jasun, I will check out Jack Miles’ God, and I look forward to reading your post(s) while you are gone and when you return. May this season of Lent bring you closer to God, deepen your faith, and renew your spirit.
This post is written at such a level (of language and thought) that trying to comment on it meaningfully would require at least studying it (in its parts, and as a whole), as well as, probably, studying (reading truly, let us say) the work by Jung.
I will note that I see Jung and Emanuele Severino — two bolsters of my mind’s life before my conversion to Christianity — as two intellects so towering that they were particularly exposed to the pitfall of believing, or feeling as though their mind was God or God's; which they came to do, each in his own way. This is simplificatory, of course, and I have vivid memory of passages where Jung states how nothing is ultimately knowable by man through the faculty of intellect; however, he perhaps later came to believe that through the powers of his intuition, man could reach ultimate knowledge.
In *Job*’s final chapter, the last part (I can’t recollect whether it starts at verse 8 or a bit later), the happy ending that meets the conventional expectations of the culture of the time (material abundance of what is wealth to earth and on earth) was added posthumously. The original work ended with Job being rewarded for sustaining what he did with the genuine vision of the reality of God, and the implicit, attached teaching that such vision and its linked sure faith cannot be achieved without the kind of trials Job had to endure (Job’s friends representing these others, society).
Thanks for the comment, ikaruga. It's interesting that you use Severino and Jung as influences, as they seem pretty opposite to me (Severino being a static Parmenides-type and Jung being a dynamic Heraclitus-type). How did Emanuele Severino impact you?
Re: Jung, I agree with you that he emphasized the powers of intuition as at least rivaling (if not greater than) that of intellect. However, toward the end of his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections he discussed how the older he got, the less he felt that he actually knew - including of himself, all of which remained ultimately mysterious to him. He also discussed how after his heart attack Jung entered into a coma and was offered the chance to ascend to another dimension (i.e. via death), but he was ultimately called back to earth after which he awoke from the coma...
I agree with you regarding the last part of Job that it was very likely added later. I should have included that in the post - it would have been a more disturbing and hence stronger ending.
Interesting. Thanks. Personally I sync with the Hollis footnote. It also seems to me that Trinitarianism mitigates against an unconscious God. The atonement wasn't merely for moral suasion but also the ontological move away from the entropy of Chronos time towards Kairos consciousness.
This “dilemma” or (or is it a trilemma, or mere sophistry?) is presented as if it’s a meaningful question. Ever since I can remember, I have doubled the premises.
Reviewing your flow chart, I stop at the first branch. Evil exists (yes); can God prevent evil? I think a better question is: Should God prevent evil? Which is a more meaningful query of God, and takes us deeper into our connection with Him.
Let’s say you make it past that first land mine, you arrive again at the same sophomoric question: Does God know about all evil (yes); then why, why…? All these questions are nested in our same limited understanding of the universe. If He is God (not god) then why should we think he is constrained by our logic?
It is very easy for me to contemplate a loving god that allows us to fail, to fall prey to our baser instincts, to experience regret, grieve, resolve to do better the next time, on our hero’s journey toward a more divine consciousness and moral life. All of that can happen in a single lifetime, not to speak of the evolution of man’s conscious over millennia.
I believe the divine requires its opposite in order to have meaning. If man is created in god’s image, there must be scope for a choice - free will - against evil and toward the divine. If god makes all the choices for us, solves all the thorny problems, then we have no role to play. NPCs indeed! But since we ARE here, and connected deeply to God, that is our role. To choose wisely, and help others with every bit of loving compassion, being sinners ourselves, that we can muster.
Hi Karen, thanks for the response. Under your conception why does evil happen to children? (such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulture_and_the_Little_Girl ) or what about intellectually disabled people who do not have the ability to strive toward a “hero’s journey toward a more divine consciousness and moral life”?
Evil happening to children thus defines itself - that is why we are so attuned to protecting them. When they are so beset, it is not their fault, but ours.
As for the intellectually disabled, I would not be one to define their limits or connection to the divine. The spark and spirit, I believe, is accessible to all, including the smallest and weakest among us. It does not require knowing
Although the article is extremely well-written, as all your articles are—congratulations!—the conclusion is rather disappointing: "It seems simpler to attribute the flawed and painful material world ... to the creation and management of an imperfect, blundering Demiurge..." So, what you're saying is: "Just blame it on the Demiurge!" The Demiurge becomes the ultimate metaphysical scapegoat. Isn't that sort of a cop-out?
You'll recognize the oblique reference, of course, being a reader of Girard yourself. Beyond his works in The Scapegoat and I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Girard made one of his most memorable arguments in his short article "Are the Gospels Mythical?" In it, Girard points to the uniqueness of Christianity: it is perhaps the only one of the world's great traditions in which the innocence of the victim is boldly and unabashedly proclaimed. The Gospels impel humanity to break free from the scapegoat mechanism, one of the things hidden since the foundation of the world. When Christ ripped the veil asunder to reveal these perverse machinations, he also raised human consciousness to a whole new level in the process.
This higher plane of being precludes the necessity to appeal to arcane concepts such as the Demiurge. And by doing exactly that, what you are actually doing is regressing into a pre-Gospel state—that is, into a lower level of consciousness. It's actually a pitiful regression. I'm not saying I know how to escape from this conundrum, and perhaps the Gospels are not the way out for you, nor for most people in the world today. But what I do know is that the best solution is surely not to turn the clock back over two thousand years, when humanity was not yet privy to this higher level of consciousness.
I'll leave you with another author I really appreciate, Julian Jaynes, as quoted by Tor Nørretranders in The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size:
“'A full discussion here would specify how the attempted reformation of Judaism by Jesus can be construed as a necessarily new religion for conscious men rather than bicameral men,'” writes Jaynes. ...Christianity is the religion of consciousness because it makes consciousness—instead of something from outside—the regulator of human behavior."
Hi Tacitius, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I appreciate your perspective. I can see how my reference to the Demiurge toward the end may seem like a regression to scapegoating. As I wrote, "Perhaps, though, this approach is just shifting the problem and the Demiurge is merely an inferior aspect of the Divine Whole, bringing us back to Jung’s view," which reflects my uncertainty on the matter. What I’m really grappling with isn’t just blaming the Demiurge but trying to understand the nature of the world we live in - particularly why it forces us into situations where we have to act against the Golden Rule. For instance, survival requires consuming other living beings, and even plants respond to being eaten, which raises the ethical paradox that survival seems to demand hypocrisy. It feels like the structure of this reality inherently creates moral contradictions, and that’s what I’m trying to make sense of.
You're right that this could be seen as a form of scapegoating, and I’m still wrestling with that. Maybe I’ll refine my thoughts as I continue reflecting on these issues.
Thanks as well for mentioning I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Are the Gospels Mythical?, and The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. I’ll add them to my list to read.
Pre-Gospel state and "lower level of consciousness" if one sees evil in this world coming from an Evil?
But that is in the Gospel, and, broadly, all over the New Testament.
Wishing you to enter the higher state of having read them — if you have so much to impart upon us all prior to reading them, it will be even more after it happens.
I am and have been a critic of Jung for some time, as you might remember. I see in his work a fundamental approach to life that places the mechanistic above all other processes, and I honestly see in this post, exactly what I wrote in my piece, Prophets of the Machine God. It is undeniable that what Jung was tapping into was the rise from a state of potential, to a state where the nature of a god is actualized.
In essence, this is quite similar to the development of an egregore, the question ultimately being if the arising god has a source from outside human intellection or within it.
In a very direct since, this issue with Jung derives from his intention to map "the subconscious" and transform it into a zone that essentially transforms into an objective space.
Of course he had to come to grips with the bible, as the entire narrative of western civilation is that the god of the Jews is the one overall supergod. I have absolutely no doubt that this drove him into a health crisis until he resolved it.
My personal objection has absolutely nothing to do with dethroning Jehovah, which should have been done a couple thousand years ago, and would have saved people and planet from enourmous depredation and oppression. My objection to Jung is his quantification of irreducible forces into machine expressions. This very process of reducing gods to archetypes defines god as something contained within concepts, and immediately places them into a mechanistic relationship with objective cognition.
No god can be subordinate to concept and still be a god, thus the ultimate purpose of Jungian psychology is to mechanize and materialize divinity.
This is all well and good, as it is at the very least parallel to pathways of manifestation, yet ultimately this entire process tends to focus all efforts back into the material, in essence becoming blind to spirituality.
Therefore, I find it impossible for Jungian psychology to fulfill any of the modern apologies for it as a spiritual system.
Hi Mike, thanks for the response and link. I’ve heard this criticism of Jung elsewhere that he reduces mysticism to process, and therefore he ends up furthering the very secular materialism he criticizes. I’m open to this criticism although undecided on it either way, and would ask what your proposed alternative is?
For me, I definitely see in myself that we have many competing and conflicting emotions and drives, that we tend to try to suppress the dark sides of ourselves, and I have made enormous strives toward becoming more whole through this individuation process - via journaling, via reading and writing, via dream interpretation and astrology and intuition and all sorts of other aspects that help me try to integrate these things. I believe it has brought me closer to the ultimate source, and this process is one of subsumption of ego to intuition, which in my opinion cuts against the argument of reducing mysticism to process - because intuition isn’t controllable, it is about listening and following based on faith. And because of that, based on what I am seeing in my own life, my appreciation for Jung’s approach has grown.
Then his approach has helped you, which in this world is the bottom line.
However my critique and concern is not about getting back into relationship with the more hidden areas of the psyche, it has to do instead with notions of establishing certain levels of reality in the subconscious and objectifying them.
Why is this an issue?
Primarily it has to do with a reduction of what something emanates to what something appears to be.
For a long time now, there has been this assumption that it is possible and even desirable to relegate "the subconscious" to a rational, objective map. A lot of rather famous people have built careers on this, but inevitably, it just leads to more attempts at slavery from the group that already owns everything and still doesn't have enough.
Mapping is not only inaccurate at best, it also relegates any other discoveries to a subordinate place, which is something we've suffered through for a couple thousand years with vicious and barbaric results.
An archetype is a fascinating word, and the way its defined is something directly translated from Gnosticism-minus the experiential dimension.
I personally do not believe that it is possible to accurately describe the spiritual with the language of the incarnate. I chalk this up to the reason so few can make heads or tails out of the more visionary Gnostic scripture-they are using inadequate language.
So can one then on a personal level be enriched by Jungs' system?
The evidence says yes.
Does this mean that personal enrichment is applicable to a wider, spiritual system?
I would say this does not necessarily follow.
Why?
Because the structure and system that can improve individuation on a personal level need not embrace the full depth and texture of spiritual reality.
This actually makes sense if one understands incarnation as derivative, rather than indicitive.
The solution to this delimma lies in understanding that common language has its sphere and limitation, nor do these encompas the depth and wonder of the spiritual.
Once we leave the dock, our notion of travel changes.
My understanding is that the individuation journey is meant to lead to greater psychological and spiritual wholeness, and that it is a journey without a final destination - no one will reach a goal of completeness in this incarnation. in Jung's autobiography, written when he was quite old, he discussed how he realized in old age how little he actually knew, including of himself, all of which remained a mystery to him. Individuation is not meant to be able to encapsulate or control the full depth and texture of spiritual reality, which, I agree with you, incarnation as derivative rather than indicative. This goes back to the question above, though: what are the practices that you follow? Do you believe your practices help you embrace a greater depth and texture of spiritual reality?
My most essential practice involves a variety of steps, depending upon my own level of intensity. First and foremost is radical acceptance. It is radical because it is hindered by nothing. Radical acceptance is perception without judgement, or qualification, it is experience without weighing that state with any notion or attempt at classification.
I could write an entire piece merely upon this practice. There is never any rejection. Things are allowed to follow their own course. This is effective for me because my current incarnation has been extremely challenging, and this allows me to simply be alive.
If I have the time, and the intensity lessens to allow greater expression, I may go into breathing, at first simply following breath until I feel change in the pattern.
The goal is always to deepen and lengthen the cycle of breathing, to feel the flow of life as it moves. I particularly love breathing and being with trees. They are slow, and aware and offer a great contrast to the crazed self absorption of modern living.
Lastly in terms of three things I always do, no matter what I'm doing, is I regularly enter into non-thinking, The Silence.
There is more, personally, that might not be applicable to general discussion, involving an entire array, from precognition, spirits, to vision and more.
All that said, the foundation is always the three of acceptance, breathing, silence.
Do I find that these help me to embrace a greater depth and texture of spiritual reality?
Well, this will probably sound odd, but no, I don't. What they are, is a way of becoming. They are about this life, living in a fashion by which the density of existence is lessened. The spiritual is pure all by itself, it needs no help. The incarnate, however, is forever wayward, forgetful, difficult, so it must be the focus to bring things into harmony with the Way.
I attended a ten day Vipassana meditation retreat many years ago and enjoyed it - about ten or twelve hours of meditation a day, guided by S.N. Goenka on audiotape so the instructions were standardized across the retreats.
I rarely have the luxury of quiet time, so I must fashion it myself. This does not mean I deny it, just that I don't practice according to any current tradition. My practice was arrived at with the help of a couple teachers, to devise an approach that I could fit into my life.
I have demonstrated to myself that the three I mentioned have the power to bring me back into the flow. They work in all manner of situations, from the persistent aim of society to bring unsettlingness, to the horror and grief of murder.
If I need any more, I rely on psychic perception, but the core, as I said, is just to navigate this life in the best way possible.
Sad isn't it. He is the Potter and we are the clay. Some people believe in sky burials so to say this is a shock to my system it is not. Context is everything.
Jung and Hoeller were/are, more than anything else, both stultifyingly pedantic fellows -- so who were/are they to criticize, admonish, or instruct anyone about anything? "This is considering oneself illumined when one is not illumined..."
All aspects, Neo. Life is short and most people manage it well enough without advice from specialist experts. Nature, evolution (and/or God) don't give a hoot about the construction and promulgation of such academic lists and narrative explanations. It's like trying to put another brain-containing head atop the one you were born with.
I’ve heard feedback from others that dwelling on metaphysics isn’t worth it to people focused on living their lives. I understand the sentiment; perhaps it’s a luxury I wouldn’t be focused on other circumstances. Still, this life is a puzzle and I feel compelled to investigate it to my abilities, even though we’ll never have a full understanding in this life…
I am not saying that dwelling on metaphysics isn't worth it or that it is a luxury, I'm saying it is unnecessary. See my second comment on putting another head atop the one you were born with. For example, in large part I agree with the Hoeller points you quoted, but it's not because of the penetration of his analysis and the accuracy of his expositions, but because much of what he says is implicit in the way things are -- whether or not it's talked about (e.g., "mansplaining") by any humans or not.
I think, Larry, that if you think what Hoeller is saying is common sense to you, that I would love to be around you and the people you associate with - because this kind of stuff is nothing like what I've seen in my world from education, mentors, life experience for most of my life or otherwise. I think you are lucky if this comes naturally to you.
Why do we need the idea of some god that is humanized?
Same reason why we humanize our pets....a stupid human trick to pretend like we understand.
With language, our brains were nudged to tune into a common prediction instead of personal prediction. When one relies on others to know what is real or not, they aren't using their own senses to confirm it, whether by thought or experience. Language replaced the need to experience something to consider it real.
Here's a documentary of the Piraha Amazonian tribe that were being told about Jesus. Notice how they do not take the past as fact, just because it was in the Bible, etc.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BNajfMZGnuo
https://robc137.substack.com/p/alphabet-vs-the-goddess
I agree with you, Rob, on the need for experiential truth. I think that's what people in this age of ubiquitous nihilism are craving more than anything else, not to be told what is true or what to believe but to experience it firsthand. This is why I've been increasingly focused on the individuation process - listening to one's intuition, balanced against the intellect/senses/feelings, the intuition of which nudges one toward fulfilling the unique objectives that each individual is put on this planet to achieve - because it about experiencing subjective truth firsthand instead of listening to the media, government, or approved "experts" to tell us what is true.
It's pretty crazy that there's a sizeable minority that thinks that it would be better to go back to the old ways, as if those times weren't fraught with injustice!
I call them the nostalgia cult. 😂
"If you can see farther than others, it is "because you are standing on the shoulders of giants," which is a famous quote attributed to Isaac Newton, meaning that your achievements are built upon the work and knowledge of those who came before you." - Google
Weird! It's like we are switching roles.
I began the Children of Job substack with an exploration of the book of Job and the Tanakh, the Old Testament, with particular reference to Jack Miles’ God (which I recommend). His interpretation of the book of Job echoes Carl Jung from fifty years earlier, with Answer to Job, a book I first read in my twenties.
Mission crept over the ensuing months, until I wound up writing a lot more about standard sociocultural engineering operating procedures, the Jew Question, World War 2, and even taking an unprecedented (non-voluntary) dive into Trumponomics. Early on, I came on yr site, and yr writing on international bankers had an influence on my understanding of the JQ, and we argued (a bit) over DJT & movies.
Now it's a few days before Lent, during which I plan to take an Internet sabbatical, and I have six weeks’ worth of posts scheduled to air in my absence. None of them were about Job (until now), but I have been wondering if, when (or if?) I return, I will finally get back to the God stuff.
Then, out of the blue, you write a piece about the book of Job. Evidently, Substack abhors a vacuum!
Reading yr piece I felt my response getting longer & longer, the more I read. Now it’s 2,000 words and that means it will be a full article which will get queued up behind all the other posts and won't be online until near the end of Lent (sorry); but it may herald the return to the God-stuff I was hoping for!
Time is not what it seems to be. Watch this space. :)
Thanks Jasun, I will check out Jack Miles’ God, and I look forward to reading your post(s) while you are gone and when you return. May this season of Lent bring you closer to God, deepen your faith, and renew your spirit.
This post is written at such a level (of language and thought) that trying to comment on it meaningfully would require at least studying it (in its parts, and as a whole), as well as, probably, studying (reading truly, let us say) the work by Jung.
I will note that I see Jung and Emanuele Severino — two bolsters of my mind’s life before my conversion to Christianity — as two intellects so towering that they were particularly exposed to the pitfall of believing, or feeling as though their mind was God or God's; which they came to do, each in his own way. This is simplificatory, of course, and I have vivid memory of passages where Jung states how nothing is ultimately knowable by man through the faculty of intellect; however, he perhaps later came to believe that through the powers of his intuition, man could reach ultimate knowledge.
In *Job*’s final chapter, the last part (I can’t recollect whether it starts at verse 8 or a bit later), the happy ending that meets the conventional expectations of the culture of the time (material abundance of what is wealth to earth and on earth) was added posthumously. The original work ended with Job being rewarded for sustaining what he did with the genuine vision of the reality of God, and the implicit, attached teaching that such vision and its linked sure faith cannot be achieved without the kind of trials Job had to endure (Job’s friends representing these others, society).
Thanks for the comment, ikaruga. It's interesting that you use Severino and Jung as influences, as they seem pretty opposite to me (Severino being a static Parmenides-type and Jung being a dynamic Heraclitus-type). How did Emanuele Severino impact you?
Re: Jung, I agree with you that he emphasized the powers of intuition as at least rivaling (if not greater than) that of intellect. However, toward the end of his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections he discussed how the older he got, the less he felt that he actually knew - including of himself, all of which remained ultimately mysterious to him. He also discussed how after his heart attack Jung entered into a coma and was offered the chance to ascend to another dimension (i.e. via death), but he was ultimately called back to earth after which he awoke from the coma...
I agree with you regarding the last part of Job that it was very likely added later. I should have included that in the post - it would have been a more disturbing and hence stronger ending.
Interesting. Thanks. Personally I sync with the Hollis footnote. It also seems to me that Trinitarianism mitigates against an unconscious God. The atonement wasn't merely for moral suasion but also the ontological move away from the entropy of Chronos time towards Kairos consciousness.
This “dilemma” or (or is it a trilemma, or mere sophistry?) is presented as if it’s a meaningful question. Ever since I can remember, I have doubled the premises.
Reviewing your flow chart, I stop at the first branch. Evil exists (yes); can God prevent evil? I think a better question is: Should God prevent evil? Which is a more meaningful query of God, and takes us deeper into our connection with Him.
Let’s say you make it past that first land mine, you arrive again at the same sophomoric question: Does God know about all evil (yes); then why, why…? All these questions are nested in our same limited understanding of the universe. If He is God (not god) then why should we think he is constrained by our logic?
It is very easy for me to contemplate a loving god that allows us to fail, to fall prey to our baser instincts, to experience regret, grieve, resolve to do better the next time, on our hero’s journey toward a more divine consciousness and moral life. All of that can happen in a single lifetime, not to speak of the evolution of man’s conscious over millennia.
I believe the divine requires its opposite in order to have meaning. If man is created in god’s image, there must be scope for a choice - free will - against evil and toward the divine. If god makes all the choices for us, solves all the thorny problems, then we have no role to play. NPCs indeed! But since we ARE here, and connected deeply to God, that is our role. To choose wisely, and help others with every bit of loving compassion, being sinners ourselves, that we can muster.
Hi Karen, thanks for the response. Under your conception why does evil happen to children? (such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulture_and_the_Little_Girl ) or what about intellectually disabled people who do not have the ability to strive toward a “hero’s journey toward a more divine consciousness and moral life”?
Evil happening to children thus defines itself - that is why we are so attuned to protecting them. When they are so beset, it is not their fault, but ours.
As for the intellectually disabled, I would not be one to define their limits or connection to the divine. The spark and spirit, I believe, is accessible to all, including the smallest and weakest among us. It does not require knowing
Thank you for the mention. This seems promising. I'll save to read later with the focus it deserves.
Although the article is extremely well-written, as all your articles are—congratulations!—the conclusion is rather disappointing: "It seems simpler to attribute the flawed and painful material world ... to the creation and management of an imperfect, blundering Demiurge..." So, what you're saying is: "Just blame it on the Demiurge!" The Demiurge becomes the ultimate metaphysical scapegoat. Isn't that sort of a cop-out?
You'll recognize the oblique reference, of course, being a reader of Girard yourself. Beyond his works in The Scapegoat and I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Girard made one of his most memorable arguments in his short article "Are the Gospels Mythical?" In it, Girard points to the uniqueness of Christianity: it is perhaps the only one of the world's great traditions in which the innocence of the victim is boldly and unabashedly proclaimed. The Gospels impel humanity to break free from the scapegoat mechanism, one of the things hidden since the foundation of the world. When Christ ripped the veil asunder to reveal these perverse machinations, he also raised human consciousness to a whole new level in the process.
This higher plane of being precludes the necessity to appeal to arcane concepts such as the Demiurge. And by doing exactly that, what you are actually doing is regressing into a pre-Gospel state—that is, into a lower level of consciousness. It's actually a pitiful regression. I'm not saying I know how to escape from this conundrum, and perhaps the Gospels are not the way out for you, nor for most people in the world today. But what I do know is that the best solution is surely not to turn the clock back over two thousand years, when humanity was not yet privy to this higher level of consciousness.
I'll leave you with another author I really appreciate, Julian Jaynes, as quoted by Tor Nørretranders in The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size:
“'A full discussion here would specify how the attempted reformation of Judaism by Jesus can be construed as a necessarily new religion for conscious men rather than bicameral men,'” writes Jaynes. ...Christianity is the religion of consciousness because it makes consciousness—instead of something from outside—the regulator of human behavior."
Hi Tacitius, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I appreciate your perspective. I can see how my reference to the Demiurge toward the end may seem like a regression to scapegoating. As I wrote, "Perhaps, though, this approach is just shifting the problem and the Demiurge is merely an inferior aspect of the Divine Whole, bringing us back to Jung’s view," which reflects my uncertainty on the matter. What I’m really grappling with isn’t just blaming the Demiurge but trying to understand the nature of the world we live in - particularly why it forces us into situations where we have to act against the Golden Rule. For instance, survival requires consuming other living beings, and even plants respond to being eaten, which raises the ethical paradox that survival seems to demand hypocrisy. It feels like the structure of this reality inherently creates moral contradictions, and that’s what I’m trying to make sense of.
You're right that this could be seen as a form of scapegoating, and I’m still wrestling with that. Maybe I’ll refine my thoughts as I continue reflecting on these issues.
Thanks as well for mentioning I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Are the Gospels Mythical?, and The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. I’ll add them to my list to read.
Pre-Gospel state and "lower level of consciousness" if one sees evil in this world coming from an Evil?
But that is in the Gospel, and, broadly, all over the New Testament.
Wishing you to enter the higher state of having read them — if you have so much to impart upon us all prior to reading them, it will be even more after it happens.
NLF,
I am and have been a critic of Jung for some time, as you might remember. I see in his work a fundamental approach to life that places the mechanistic above all other processes, and I honestly see in this post, exactly what I wrote in my piece, Prophets of the Machine God. It is undeniable that what Jung was tapping into was the rise from a state of potential, to a state where the nature of a god is actualized.
In essence, this is quite similar to the development of an egregore, the question ultimately being if the arising god has a source from outside human intellection or within it.
In a very direct since, this issue with Jung derives from his intention to map "the subconscious" and transform it into a zone that essentially transforms into an objective space.
Of course he had to come to grips with the bible, as the entire narrative of western civilation is that the god of the Jews is the one overall supergod. I have absolutely no doubt that this drove him into a health crisis until he resolved it.
My personal objection has absolutely nothing to do with dethroning Jehovah, which should have been done a couple thousand years ago, and would have saved people and planet from enourmous depredation and oppression. My objection to Jung is his quantification of irreducible forces into machine expressions. This very process of reducing gods to archetypes defines god as something contained within concepts, and immediately places them into a mechanistic relationship with objective cognition.
No god can be subordinate to concept and still be a god, thus the ultimate purpose of Jungian psychology is to mechanize and materialize divinity.
This is all well and good, as it is at the very least parallel to pathways of manifestation, yet ultimately this entire process tends to focus all efforts back into the material, in essence becoming blind to spirituality.
Therefore, I find it impossible for Jungian psychology to fulfill any of the modern apologies for it as a spiritual system.
https://mikekay.substack.com/p/prophets-of-the-machine-god
Hi Mike, thanks for the response and link. I’ve heard this criticism of Jung elsewhere that he reduces mysticism to process, and therefore he ends up furthering the very secular materialism he criticizes. I’m open to this criticism although undecided on it either way, and would ask what your proposed alternative is?
For me, I definitely see in myself that we have many competing and conflicting emotions and drives, that we tend to try to suppress the dark sides of ourselves, and I have made enormous strives toward becoming more whole through this individuation process - via journaling, via reading and writing, via dream interpretation and astrology and intuition and all sorts of other aspects that help me try to integrate these things. I believe it has brought me closer to the ultimate source, and this process is one of subsumption of ego to intuition, which in my opinion cuts against the argument of reducing mysticism to process - because intuition isn’t controllable, it is about listening and following based on faith. And because of that, based on what I am seeing in my own life, my appreciation for Jung’s approach has grown.
Then his approach has helped you, which in this world is the bottom line.
However my critique and concern is not about getting back into relationship with the more hidden areas of the psyche, it has to do instead with notions of establishing certain levels of reality in the subconscious and objectifying them.
Why is this an issue?
Primarily it has to do with a reduction of what something emanates to what something appears to be.
For a long time now, there has been this assumption that it is possible and even desirable to relegate "the subconscious" to a rational, objective map. A lot of rather famous people have built careers on this, but inevitably, it just leads to more attempts at slavery from the group that already owns everything and still doesn't have enough.
Mapping is not only inaccurate at best, it also relegates any other discoveries to a subordinate place, which is something we've suffered through for a couple thousand years with vicious and barbaric results.
An archetype is a fascinating word, and the way its defined is something directly translated from Gnosticism-minus the experiential dimension.
I personally do not believe that it is possible to accurately describe the spiritual with the language of the incarnate. I chalk this up to the reason so few can make heads or tails out of the more visionary Gnostic scripture-they are using inadequate language.
So can one then on a personal level be enriched by Jungs' system?
The evidence says yes.
Does this mean that personal enrichment is applicable to a wider, spiritual system?
I would say this does not necessarily follow.
Why?
Because the structure and system that can improve individuation on a personal level need not embrace the full depth and texture of spiritual reality.
This actually makes sense if one understands incarnation as derivative, rather than indicitive.
The solution to this delimma lies in understanding that common language has its sphere and limitation, nor do these encompas the depth and wonder of the spiritual.
Once we leave the dock, our notion of travel changes.
My understanding is that the individuation journey is meant to lead to greater psychological and spiritual wholeness, and that it is a journey without a final destination - no one will reach a goal of completeness in this incarnation. in Jung's autobiography, written when he was quite old, he discussed how he realized in old age how little he actually knew, including of himself, all of which remained a mystery to him. Individuation is not meant to be able to encapsulate or control the full depth and texture of spiritual reality, which, I agree with you, incarnation as derivative rather than indicative. This goes back to the question above, though: what are the practices that you follow? Do you believe your practices help you embrace a greater depth and texture of spiritual reality?
My most essential practice involves a variety of steps, depending upon my own level of intensity. First and foremost is radical acceptance. It is radical because it is hindered by nothing. Radical acceptance is perception without judgement, or qualification, it is experience without weighing that state with any notion or attempt at classification.
I could write an entire piece merely upon this practice. There is never any rejection. Things are allowed to follow their own course. This is effective for me because my current incarnation has been extremely challenging, and this allows me to simply be alive.
If I have the time, and the intensity lessens to allow greater expression, I may go into breathing, at first simply following breath until I feel change in the pattern.
The goal is always to deepen and lengthen the cycle of breathing, to feel the flow of life as it moves. I particularly love breathing and being with trees. They are slow, and aware and offer a great contrast to the crazed self absorption of modern living.
Lastly in terms of three things I always do, no matter what I'm doing, is I regularly enter into non-thinking, The Silence.
There is more, personally, that might not be applicable to general discussion, involving an entire array, from precognition, spirits, to vision and more.
All that said, the foundation is always the three of acceptance, breathing, silence.
Do I find that these help me to embrace a greater depth and texture of spiritual reality?
Well, this will probably sound odd, but no, I don't. What they are, is a way of becoming. They are about this life, living in a fashion by which the density of existence is lessened. The spiritual is pure all by itself, it needs no help. The incarnate, however, is forever wayward, forgetful, difficult, so it must be the focus to bring things into harmony with the Way.
Hope this answers your question.
Thanks Mike. It sounds like your practice is very similar to Vipassana meditation - have you tried it? https://www.amazon.com/Art-Living-Vipassana-Meditation/dp/0060637242 It’s all about meditation and breath work.
I attended a ten day Vipassana meditation retreat many years ago and enjoyed it - about ten or twelve hours of meditation a day, guided by S.N. Goenka on audiotape so the instructions were standardized across the retreats.
No, I haven't tried it, or was even aware of it.
I rarely have the luxury of quiet time, so I must fashion it myself. This does not mean I deny it, just that I don't practice according to any current tradition. My practice was arrived at with the help of a couple teachers, to devise an approach that I could fit into my life.
I have demonstrated to myself that the three I mentioned have the power to bring me back into the flow. They work in all manner of situations, from the persistent aim of society to bring unsettlingness, to the horror and grief of murder.
If I need any more, I rely on psychic perception, but the core, as I said, is just to navigate this life in the best way possible.
Best wishes.
We don't need to re-invent the wheel. Meaning subjective truth "ain't all that"....if you know what I mean!
Hi MsRhuby, how are you defining objective truth if you object to subjective truth as used in this context? Objective by who's measurement?
There is a Higher Power than yourself but if you don't recognize it I'm sure I can't help you. The Book of Job Chapter 38
The question isn’t whether there is a higher power, but the nature of that higher power!
From what I know the higher power is looking out for your best good. Whether you accept it's guidance is voluntary!
Was the higher power looking out for this little girl’s best good?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vulture_and_the_Little_Girl
Sad isn't it. He is the Potter and we are the clay. Some people believe in sky burials so to say this is a shock to my system it is not. Context is everything.
Jung and Hoeller were/are, more than anything else, both stultifyingly pedantic fellows -- so who were/are they to criticize, admonish, or instruct anyone about anything? "This is considering oneself illumined when one is not illumined..."
Hi Larry, what aspects of their works do you find stultifyingly pedantic?
All aspects, Neo. Life is short and most people manage it well enough without advice from specialist experts. Nature, evolution (and/or God) don't give a hoot about the construction and promulgation of such academic lists and narrative explanations. It's like trying to put another brain-containing head atop the one you were born with.
I’ve heard feedback from others that dwelling on metaphysics isn’t worth it to people focused on living their lives. I understand the sentiment; perhaps it’s a luxury I wouldn’t be focused on other circumstances. Still, this life is a puzzle and I feel compelled to investigate it to my abilities, even though we’ll never have a full understanding in this life…
I am not saying that dwelling on metaphysics isn't worth it or that it is a luxury, I'm saying it is unnecessary. See my second comment on putting another head atop the one you were born with. For example, in large part I agree with the Hoeller points you quoted, but it's not because of the penetration of his analysis and the accuracy of his expositions, but because much of what he says is implicit in the way things are -- whether or not it's talked about (e.g., "mansplaining") by any humans or not.
I think, Larry, that if you think what Hoeller is saying is common sense to you, that I would love to be around you and the people you associate with - because this kind of stuff is nothing like what I've seen in my world from education, mentors, life experience for most of my life or otherwise. I think you are lucky if this comes naturally to you.
Skewed results from a too small sample, I guess -- a common statistical problem. Comes from preoccupation, maybe.
Not a fan.