GOD, THE DEVIL, AND THE HUMAN SOUL
1 or more Ilian fifty years rvc have known, or could have known, that there is an unconscious as a counterbalance to consciousness.
Medical psychology has furnished all the necessary empirical and experimental proofs of this. There is an unconscious psychic reality which demonstrably influences consciousness and its contents.
All this is known, but no practical conclusions have been drawn from it. We still go on thinking and acting as before, as if we were simplex and not duplex. Accordingly we imagine ourselves to be innocuous, reasonable, and humane.
We do not think of distrusting our motives or of asking ourselves how the inner man feels about the things we do in the outside world. But actually it is frivolous, superficial, and unreasonable of us, as well as psychically unhygienic, to overlook the reaction and viewpoint of the unconscious.
One can regard one’s stomach or heart as unimportant and worthy of contempt, but that does not prevent overeating or overexertion from having consequences that affect the whole man. Yet we think that psychic mistakes and their consequences can be got rid of with mere words, for “psychic” means less than air to most people.
All the same, nobody can deny that without the psyche there would be no world at all and still less a human world. Virtually everything depends on the human soul and its functions. It should be worthy of all the attention we can give it, especially today,
when everyone admits that the weal or woe of the future will be decided neither by the attacks of wild animals nor by natural catastrophes nor by the danger of world-wide epidemics but simply by the psychic changes in man.
It needs only an almost imperceptible disturbance of equilibrium in a few of our rulers’ heads to plunge the world into blood, fire, and radioactivity. The technical means necessary for this are present on both sides. And certain conscious deliberations, uncontrolled by any inner opponent, can be indulged in all too easily, as we have seen already from the example of one “leader.”
The consciousness of modern man still clings so much to outward objects th a t he makes them exclusively responsible, as if it were on them that the decision depended. That the psychic state of certain individuals could emancipate itself for once from the behavior of objects is something that is considered far too little, although irrationalities of this sort are observed every day and can happen to everyone.
The forlornness of consciousness in our world is due primarily to the loss of instinct, and the reason for this lies in the development of the human mind over the past aeon.
The more power man had over nature the more his knowledge and skill went to his head and the deeper became his contempt for the merely natural and accidental, for that which is irrationally given — including the objective psyche, which is all that consciousness is not.
In contrast to the subjectivism of the conscious mind, the unconscious is objective, manifesting itself mainly in the form of contrary feelings, fantasies, emotions, impulses, and dreams, none of which one makes oneself but which come upon one objectively.
Even today psychology is still for the most p a rt the science of conscious contents,
measured as far as possible by collective standards.
The individual psyche became a mere accident, a “random ” phenomenon, while the unconscious, which can only manifest itself in the real, “ irrationally given” human being, was ignored altogether.
This was not the result of carelessness or of lack of knowledge, but of downright resistance to the mere possibility of there being a second psychic authority besides the ego.
It seems a positive menace to the ego th a t its monarchy could be doubted. The religious person, on the other hand, is accustomed to the thought of not being sole master in his own house. He believes th a t God, and not he himself, decides in the end.
But how many of us would dare to let the will of God decide, and which of us would not feel embarrassed if he had to say how far the decision came from God himself? ‘
I he religious person, so far as one can judge, stands directly under the influence of the reaction from the unconscious. As a rule he calls this the operation of conscience. But since the same psychic background produces reactions other than moral ones, the believer is measuring his conscience by
the traditional ethical standard and thus by a collective value, in which endeavor he is assiduously supported by his Church. So long as the individual can hold fast to his traditional beliefs, and the circumstances of his time do not demand stronger emphasis on individual autonomy, he can rest content with the situation.
But the situation is radically altered when the worldly-minded man who is oriented to external factors and has lost his religious beliefs appears en masse, as is the case today.
The believer is then forced into the defensive and must catechize himself on the foundation of his beliefs. He is no longer sustained by the tremendous suggestive power of the consensus omnium, and is keenly aware of the weakening of the Church and the precariousness of its dogmatic assumptions.
To counter this the Church recommends more faith, as if this gift of grace depended on msn’s good will and pleasure. The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness b u t spontaneous religious experience, which brings m an ’s faith into immediate relation with God.
Here we must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, an d hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd?
To this question there is a positive answer only when the individual is willing to fulfill the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge.
If he follows through his intention, he will not only discover some im p o rtan t tru th s ab o u t h im self, b u t will also have gained a psychological a d vantage: he will have succeeded in deeming himself worthy of serious attenemtopm io n and sympathetic interest. He will have set his h an d to a declaration of his own h um an dignity and taken the first step toward the foundations of his conciousness — th a t is, toward the unconscious, the only accessible source of religious experience.
This is certainly n ot to say th a t what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set p in his place. I t is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to w h a t the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of h um an knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem.
The religious person enjoys a great advantage when it comes to answering the crucial question that hangs over our time like a th re a t: he has a clear idea of the way his subjective existence is grounded in his relation to “
God.” I p u t the word “ God” in quotes in order to indicate th a t we are dealing with an anthropomorphic idea whose dynamism and symbolism are filtered th ro u g h the medium of the unconscious psyche.
Anyone who wants to can a t least draw nea r the source of such experiences, no m a tte r whether he believes in God or not. Without this app ro ach it is only in ra re cases that we witness those iraculous conversions of which Pau l’s Damascus experience is the prototype.
T h a t religious experiences exist no longer needs proof. But it will always remain doubtful whether what metaphysics and theology call God and the gods is the real ground of these experiences. T h e question is idle, actually, and answers itself by reason of the subjectively overwhelming numinosity of the experience. Anyone who has h ad it is 58
seized by it and therefore not in a position to indulge in fruitless metaphysical or epistemological
speculations. Absolute certainty brings its own evidence and has no need of anthropomorphic proofs.
I n v i e w of die general ignorance of and bias against psychology it must be accounted a misfortune that the one experience which makes sense of individual existence should seem to have its origin in a medium that is certain to catch everybody’s prejudices. Once more the doubt is heard:
“W h a t good can come out of Nazareth?” The u n conscious, if not regarded outright as a sort of refuse bin underneath the conscious mind, is at any rate supposed to be o f ‘‘merely animal n a tu re .” In reality, however, and by definition it is of uncertain extent and constitution, so th at over- or u n d e rvaluation of it is groundless and can be dismissed as mere prejudice. At all events such judgments sound very queer in the mouths of Christians whose
Lord was himself born on the straw of a stable, among the domestic animals. It would have been more to the taste of the multitude if he had got himself born in a temple. In the same way, the worldly-minded mass man looks for the numinous experience in the mass meeting, which provides an infinitely more imposing background th an the in dividual soul.
Even Church Christians share this pernicious delusion.
Psychology’s insistence on the importance of unconscious processes for religious experience is extremely unpopular, no less with the Right than with the Left.
For the former the deciding factor is the historical revelation th a t came to man from outside; to the la tte r this is sheer nonsense, and man has no religious function at all, except belief in the p arty doctrine, when suddenly the most intense faith is called for. On top of this, the various creeds assert quite different things, and each of them claims to possess the absolute truth
Yet today we live in a unitary world where distances are reckoned by hours and no longer by weeks and months. Exotic races have ceased to be peep shows in ethnological museums.
They have become our neighbors, and what was yesterday the prerogative of the ethnologist is today a political, social, and psychological problem. Already the
ideological spheres begin to touch, to interpenetrate,
and the time may not be so far off when the question of mutual understanding in this field will become acute.
To make oneself understood is certainly impossible
without far-reaching comprehension of the
o th e r’s viewpoint. The insight needed for this will
have repercussions on both sides. History will
undoubtedly pass over those who feel it is their
vocation to resist this inevitable development,
however desirable and psychologically necessary it may be to cling to what is essential and good in our own tradition. Despite all the differences, the unity of mankind will assert itself irresistibly.
On this card Marxist doctrine has staked its life, while the West hopes to get through with technology and economic aid. Communism has not overlooked the enormous importance of the ideological element and the universality of basic principles.
The nations of the F ar East share this ideological weakness with us and are ju st as vulnerable as we arc.
The underestimation of the psychological factor is likely to take bitter revenge. It is therefore high time we caught up with ourselves in this matter. For the present this must remain a pious wish,
because self-knowledge, in addition to being highly
unpopular, seems to be unpleasantly idealistic, reeks of m orality, and is preoccupied with the psychological shadow, which is denied whenever possible or at least not spoken of.
The task that faces our age is indeed almost insuperably difficult. It makes the highest demands on our responsibility if we are not to be guilty of another trahison des clercs. It addresses itself to those guiding and influential personalities who have the necessary intelligence to understand the situation our world is in.
One might expect them to consult their consciences. But since it is not only a matter of intellectual understanding but of moral conclusions, there is unfortunately no cause for optimism.
Nature, as we know, is not so lavish with her boons th a t she joins to a high intelligence the gifts of the h ea rt also. As a rule, where one is present the other is lacking, and where one capacity is present to perfection it is generally at the cost of all the others.
The discrepancy between intellect and feeling, which get in each o ther’s way at the best of times, is a particularly painful chapter in the history of the human psyche. There is no sense in formulating the task that
our age has forced upon us as a moral demand. We can, at best, merely make the psychological world situation so clear that it can be seen even by the myopic, and give utterance to words and ideas which even the hard of hearing can hear.
We may hope for men of understanding and men of good will, and must therefore not grow weary of reiterating those thoughts and insights which are needed.
Finally, even the truth can spread and not only the popular lie. ~Carl Jung, Atlantic Monthly Magazine, Pages 57-63
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
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