1. How can these primitives be impressed with our religion?
Miss Wolff: There is an old German poem where Christ is represented as the hero with a sword, doing great deeds.
Dr. Jung: Yes, he is represented there as the healer and also as the hero and warrior.
It is peculiarly applicable to our Christian nations, just emerging from the Great War. We are most of us very unconscious about it.
To one born in the East it is convincing and impressive that a Christian people could use the sword to that extent.
It is the German warlike quality, the primitive berserker rage that is in the Western man in general.
So this man’s Christ is equipped with a long sword, that most peaceful redeemer Lord leading an armed host.
And the sword is detachable, an impression that would not originate in the Western Christian mind, only in one born outside, to whom the European is not the model of virtue.
As soon as I was outside our white civilization, I saw what Europeans are like. We look awful.
The Chinese call us devils and it is true, thin cruel lips, and our wrinkles are uncanny.
And we are always intent on something no devil can understand. What are we seeking? Why the devil should we be seeking at all?
To a Pueblo Indian, God in his completeness is walking over the heavens every day.
As you approach the coast of Europe from the great flats of Africa, and see the snow-capped mountains, the little bays, etc., you know that this is the country where the pirates live, where their raids start upon the quiet, cattle-like men on their grassy plains.
From Europe, that half-island, the white man came in ships, bringing awful diseases and fire-water, and even intentionally selling infected clothing to destroy the population, as they did in the South Seas.
Wherever the white man went, there was hell for the other nations; one has to be outside to understand.
The white man is a very beast devouring the earth, the whole world trembles at him. Such Christianity is a compensation, a hellish lie.
The missionaries told me how they shoot antelopes from their bedroom windows, and how they cheat the British Government for a game license.
They complain of their lot, when actually there is nothing more interesting than life among the primitive tribes.
Rockefeller has given a great deal of money to the missions, but the people of the countryside say, “Don’t employ a boy trained in the missions-they all lie and steal.”
How can these primitives be impressed with our religion?
They accept it as the old Britons accepted it, who took Christianity, trembling, from the lances of the Roman legions. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminars, Page 337-338
Dogma and science are incommensurable quantities which damage one another by mutual contamination. Dogma as a factor in religion is of inestimable value precisely because of its absolute standpoint. But when science dispenses with criticism and scepticism it degenerates into a sickly hot-house plant. One of the elements necessary to science is extreme uncertainty. Whenever science inclines towards dogma and shows a tendency to be impatient and fanatical, it is concealing a doubt which in all probability is justified and explaining away an uncertainty which is only too well founded. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 746
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
Religion, Religious. – Anthology
Our age wants to experience the psyche for itself. It wants original experience and not assumptions, though it is willing to make use of all the existing assumptions as a means to this end, including those of the recognized religions and the authentic sciences. .” Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition, Page 85.
But fanaticism is always a compensation for hidden doubt. Religious persecutions occur only where heresy isa menace. Carl Jung, Analytical Psychology and Education, Page 81.
Until now it has not truly and fundamentally been noted that our time, despite the prevalence of irreligiosity, is so to speak congenitally charged with the attainment of the Christian epoch, namely with the supremacy of the word, that Logos which the central figure of Christian faith represents. The word has literally become our God and has remained so. Carl Jung; Present and Future, CW 10, §554.
You see, if you are duly initiated, you surely lose all desire to found a religion because you then know what re- ligion really is. Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 503.
Rightness is not a category that can be applied to religion anyway. Religion consists of psychic realities which one cannot say are right or wrong. Are lice or elephants right or wrong? It is enough that they exist. Carl Jung, Letters Volume 1, Page 327.
Matter is an hypothesis. When you say “matter,” you are really creating a symbol for something unknown, which may just as well be “spirit” or anything else; it may even be God. Religious faith, on the other hand, refuses to
give up its pre-Weltanschauung, in contradiction to the saying of Christ, the faithful try to remain children instead of becoming as children. Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 477, Para 762.
But religious statements without exception have to do with the reality of the psyche and not with the reality of physis. Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Page 464.
At the Reformation two things happened which upset the absolute attitude of that day: (a) Crucifixes were found in Mexico, which undermined the belief in the uniqueness of the Christian religion where the crucifixion was the central teaching, (b) The rediscovery of Gnosticism, the Dionysian myth and so forth, which showed that teachings similar to Christianity had been prevalent before the birth of Christ. Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 15.
So long as religion is only faith and outward form, the religion’s function is not experienced in our souls, noth- ing of any importance has happened. Carl Jung, CW 12, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 12.
A religious life presupposes a conscious connection of the inner and outer worlds and it requires a constant, meticulous attention to all circumstances to the best of our knowledge and our conscience. We must watch what the gods ordain for us in the outer world, but as well as waiting for developments in the outer world we must listen to the inner world; both worlds are expressions of God. Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 36.
I want to make clear, that by the term “religion” I do not mean creed. Carl Jung, CW 8, Psychology and Religion, Page 30.
It is the role of religious symbols to give meaning to the life of man. Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols.
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings… But religion is a vital link with psychic processes independent of and beyond consciousness, in the dark hinterland of the psyche. Carl Jung CW 9i, para. 261.
Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the uncon- scious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic — and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images — are they Christian or Buddhist or what you will — are lovely, mysterious, and richly intuitive. Carl Jung; The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious; Pages 7-8.
Our psychology is a science . . . Plenty of unqualified persons are sure to push their way in and commit the greatest follies . . . Our aim is simply and solely scientific knowledge . . . If religion and morality are blown to pieces in the process, so much the worse for them . . . Knowledge is a force of nature that goes its way irresistibly from inner necessity. Carl Jung; Essay Included in CW 18; Page 314.
All religions are therapies for the sorrows and disorders of the soul.” Carl Jung; “Commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower”, 1929.
The language of religion defines God as “love,” there is always the great danger of confusing the love which works in man with the workings of God. Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para. 98.
The God-image is a complex of ideas of an archetypal nature, it must necessarily be regarded as representing a certain sum of energy (libido) which appears in which creates the attributes of divinity is the father-imago, while
in the older religions it was the mother imago… In certain pagan conceptions of divinity the maternal element is strongly emphasized. Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para. 89.
Wherever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by fright, and many run away. Such was the case with this theologian. I am of course aware that theologians are in a more difficult situation than others.
On the one hand they are closer to religion, but on the other hand they are more bound by church and dogma.
The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. The possibility that such experience might have psychic reality is anathema to them.
All very well if it has a supernatural or at least a “historical” foundation. But psychic? Face to face with this question, the patient will often show an unsuspected but profound contempt for the psyche. Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Pages 141-142.
Archetypal statements are based upon instinctive preconditions and have nothing to do with reason; they are neither rationally grounded nor can they be banished by rational arguments. They have always been part of the world scene representations collectives, as Levy-Bruhl rightly called them.
Certainly the ego and its will have a great part to play in life; but what the ego wills is subject in the highest degree to the interference, in ways of which the ego is usually unaware, of the autonomy and numinosity of archetypal processes. Practical consideration of these processes is the essence of religion, insofar as religion can be approached from a psychological point of view. Carl Jung Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 353
The psychic fact “God” is a typical autonomism, a collective archetype…It is therefore characteristic not only of all higher forms of religion, but appears spontaneously in the dreams of individuals. Carl Jung; CW 8; fn 29.
I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook. Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul
This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self.